In the video from Sun that was posted on Atlassian's blog recently the following comment, that to me is the real power of wikis, was made.
"Publishing now belongs to the community"
I completely agree. The problem I see however is that the content authored, while mostly aimed for publishing on the web, is authored or stored as "Wiki Text". Like Doug, I'm amazed that wiki markup is not seen as "arcane" in the same way as the original layout languages.
Prior to starting at Ephox, I introduced a simple wiki (JSPWiki) to the company I was working with. While there was some initial enthusiasm, it really didn't take off.
When I came to Ephox I again introduced the wiki to the team as I was still convinced that it was a great way to communicate and collaborate. We immediately replaced the simple text area and Wiki-markup1 with our editor and HTML. The explosion of content has been amazing. Everyone from Sales to the Office admin have authored content.
By allowing any person to create new content and edit existing content the wiki definitely puts the power of content publishing in the hands of the community. By adding the ability for the authors to create the content in a simple, user friendly and most importantly "arcane language" free way, I believe you truly give the power to publish rich content to the authors.
1 – JSPWiki supports storage in HTML instead of Wiki-Markup.↩
