Our First Wiki

I just read about Wetpaint (the software powering this wiki) yesterday in the Puget Sound Business Journal. I couldn't believe it, how did Webpaint get over 5 million in venture capital to build a software that already exists for FREE from Wikipedia? (The granddaddy of wiki software.) Apparently, being one of the founders of the popular Blue Nile site helps. Blue Nile, of course, is the jeweler that figured out it's more comfortable for men to shop for engagement rings online than face potential embarrassment in jewelry department stores.

The difference, the founder and CEO, Ben Elowitz claims is the easy to use interface. Funny! That's what we're hoping is the difference between our CMS software and what is currently in the marketplace.

Check out our new wiki. It was easy to set up. Not a huge variety of templates to choose from, but the editing features are very intuitive. My only gripe so far is that it looks like I can't update the "Home" navigation title (I wanted to change it to Welcome instead of the done-to-death "home"). As far as I can tell the spell check just points out potential mistakes but don't correct them. Boy, I never thought I'd miss Word. And, the wiki itself looks like all other wikis...I guess I was expecting not only an easy to use wiki, but maybe more inviting interface on the wiki itself.And, really, who has time to read all the blogs and wikis out there? I think that's the main problem with wikis and blogs - content overload. Both are a form of FREE site-building software (this point is continually lost on the website-developing public). I'm not sure that people, businesses, organizations and companies need a website, blog and a wiki - Egads man!

So the main difference between a blog and a website is that visitors can comment on blog content and potentially, build a community of people interested in a particular topic while wikis take that one step further and allow people to update content (yes, the actual posts) as well as comment on the content. Talk about a free-for-all. And, there have been documented editing wars, where one person remembers a train station in England with gold filigree, for example, and another doesn't so they keep editing each others work.

I look at wikis as another way to build a website for free. They're a little bit more like a typical website than a blog because its easier to create navigation than a blog.