Wiki's - To do or not to do
Wiki's - How important are they?
I have been, as I am sure you have been, reading and seeing all this controversy, discussion, and issues with having and doing a Wiki - either inside your company or one outside your company.
As usual, I have a comment on this.
Wiki's are great!!! Internally. Let your workers and employee's educate each other with a Wiki.
One company I recently worked with would have monthly training classes for non-division employee's. Meaning - divisions would attend a meeting, put on by another division, to learn about the product that that division was working on/in. Two to four hours a month in these meetings may have helped morale or understanding, but, loss of work was also high (to many of the meetings were attended by people who didn't want to do their existing work and this was an easy approved out of doing it).
In hi-tech, this is very common, where one division does not know what the other division does or has with its similar product and cross education/training is done.
My point is is a Wiki can do that same education in "real time" and everyone can contribute and add details and info, so the whole picture is understood by all.
But, a Wiki outside? To the general public? I can see it happening if you want to do it as "fun" or as a "joke" - which Wikipedia is quickly becoming. When Wikipedia begins to turn political (more then it is now), it will quickly lose it's luster as a "general" information base - it will fall into a label, where it will be difficult, if not impossible to get out (i.e. if it is labeled a "right wing conspiracy site", then, only those that believe they are part of the right wing conspiracy will go there).
I appreciate the value of a wiki and what it means for free speech and free collaboration. But, without safeguards in place (i.e. review of content in some way), then, they will quickly become the way of the street corner preacher (you don't see them as much anymore do you? They realized it is easier to preach to captured audiences then to people who don't care).
Think this through, if you are going to do a Wiki - understand that the content that may be posted may not be what you want. That the content may hurt your company - and be prepared for it.
Don't get me wrong - a Wiki can also bring someone or something "back from the dead", like Wikipedia did with Sinbad - BRILLIANT move by his agent to bring an actor that has dissappeared back into the limelight.
Make sure that you, the leader of your marketing, are part of the decision making process AND that all of your concerns are brought up AND understood by all parties who will be administering it.
Just because having/doing a Wiki today is the "hot" thing to do doesn't mean it is the RIGHT thing to do.