ONLamp.com: Slash's Wiki Plugin [Jan. 17, 2002] What A Wiki Is

"The nice thing about a Wiki is its simplicity."

While the story and comment format is fine for discussions, there's a whole class of collaborative work that can't be done with a standard Slash site. Occasionally, it's useful to have a brainstorming session, where getting ideas down coherently is more important than following a traditional call-and-response question format. Business people call this "synergy," but it really means something here.

Though I can't prove it at the moment, I suspect that's what lead Ward Cunningham to come up with the idea of a Wiki. It's like one of those smart whiteboards, where anyone can write anything and erase anything, but there's still a record of all revisions. The theory goes that putting simple but effective tools in the hands of smart people and staying out of the way can produce great results.