With the rise of what is collectively called “Web 2.0” sites came an unprecedented level of Internet collaboration. Today's savvy user holds RSS feeds for favorite news sites, uploads photos to communities such as Flickr and comments on blogs and message boards – all as part a ever-growing repertoire of digital tricks.

And the great part? Most of it doesn’t cost a dime.

But with great power comes great responsibility. Since many of these open-source solutions cost so little – requiring only routine upkeep, not an upfront investment – many companies have rushed to embrace them. Sites are created, message boards set up, social-networking communities begun. But do any of those approaches make sense in the business world? Their implementations are not problem-free.

One of the most popular and widespread of these tools is the wiki. As repositories for information that can be tailored to nearly any need, these powerful platforms allow visitors to add, remove and edit content. They’re the metaphorical level playing field, the true “power to the People” (note the capital P) movement. Look no further than the global reach of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that, as of May 2007, had 75,000 active contributors creating 5,300,000 articles in more than 100 languages.

Ben Franklin once envisioned a government of true “republicanism” (note the lowercase r), wherein all are subject to the same laws and hold the same authority. With the rise of 21st Century collaborative digital technologies, the Internet has become that stronghold of Franklin’s republicanism. All can contribute; all can edit and delete. All users are superusers, and no one person’s contribution is greater or less than anyone else’s. In this sense, technology has become the great equalizer.

But while a wiki with a large reach – such as Wikipedia – has the luxury of a large range of minds and a cross-sampling of opinions, its direction is slow, almost glacial. Think of your average wiki as a board meeting without an agenda: one opinion is raised, discussion ensues, another opinion is voiced, debate shifts in another direction, so on. Without a defined endpoint, the meeting dissolves into deliberation and dispute. Nothing is accomplished – and we’ve all sat through those meetings.

So is the idea of using a wiki as a business tool completely debunked? Not entirely. As a way to test the collaborative powers of a wiki – and with the goal of describing “The State of Business Communications Today” – this class began a quarter-long project to discuss not only the topic at hand but also to investigate the medium’s limitations.

What emerged was not so much a integrated, collaborative effort, but moreso disparate chapters written on different aspects of the same general topic. While all articles merit their own discussion, that lack of a unifying theme may have ill-served the project’s aim. A sampling of topics available in the Bizcomm wiki:

• Sports talk in the workplace can keep you in the game
  
• Departmental jargon: Fodder for silos
• Acronyms clutter corporate communication
• Postcards pack the perfect punch
• Communication via text messaging

With a more defined goal – and given a long enough timeline – the wiki at hand could undoubtedly grow into an organic means of collaboration. As it stands now, however, it’s a repository of disparate thoughts. While this conglomeration of different ideas is in no way a bad thing, we had a different ideal in mind when the wiki project was started.

As a business tool, online wiki collaboration can be a valuable thing, but make sure to give it a short leash. Otherwise you’ll find yourself in the digital version of the jumbled-meeting phenomenon, with lots of ideas but no goal in sight.