People have talked about online sites for sharing knowledge since the early 1990s but most of those experiments created very rigid environments that were more like forums or bulletin boards than collaborative environments.

Today we have a type of Web site that provides a knowledge sharing environment that really works - this type of site is called a Wiki.

According to the Wikipedia (see editorial links below), an online collaborative encyclopedia project based on a Wiki, a Wiki is "a website that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content." Note the fact that anyone can edit the content. Wikipedia also notes that the name was based on the Hawaiian term wiki wiki, meaning "quick" or "super-fast."

There's a long and complex history to Wikis that's well covered the Wiki history page. Should you like the idea of running your own Wiki there's a FAQ to help you and a remarkable list of Wiki engines written in just about every major language (and many minor ones).

Where a Wiki would be particularly interesting is in an intranet as a way of building an authoritative document on a subject or product. The opportunity is to create a deep analysis or description of the topic that would evolve as the topic evolved. Another interesting use might be to allow registered users of a product to develop a user techniques and tips Wiki.

You might think that a public Wiki would be hard to manage and while there are problems (such as spammers trying to get their messages into Wiki content in an effort to get their spam seen by a wide audience and indexed by search engines) techniques have evolved to make these problems manageable. For a really good example, there's not much to beat the Wikipedia - it is a truly useful document that is already a valuable reference work despite being an open and public collaborative platform.

If you already use a Wiki or are interested in deploying one in your organization, please let me know your thoughts.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.