As I’ve written before, the new wave of Internet developments that we find ourselves in is called Web 2.0. And belonging to this overarching concept are blogs, cutting edge Web designs, social media, and the like.

Blogs are personal publishing platforms. For the most part, they reflect the individual opinion of their owners. There are such things as blog networks, too – blogs that are part of a conglomeration – but each blog that’s part of it is still considered as a personal site.

On the opposite side of the Web 2.0 publishing spectrum is the wiki.

A wiki is a social publishing platform. According to Wikipedia (the most popular wiki out there), a wiki is designed to “enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.”

Many people who use Wikipedia see it simply as an online encyclopedia. (It is, in fact, one of the most heavily quoted references on the Web today.) However, that is only partially true. Wikipedia is a massive collection of knowledge, yes, but it is not an encyclopedia in the strictest sense. This is because its content is not based on concentrated research — Wikipedia contains information that is contributed by anyone who has access to the Internet.

Of course, Wikimedia Foundation (the owner of Wikipedia.org) maintains editorial control over their website’s content, but that’s about it. They don’t have a building full of their own researchers or editors or copywriters. Truth is, the Foundation has less than 20 employees. And yet, Wikipedia today contains more than 10 million articles!

If you search for “Davao City” on Wikipedia, you will see an article dedicated to this topic, with links to other related material. Those wiki articles were contributed by website users (presumably Dabawenyos). You can create your own entries and have them published, or you can edit existing articles. All you need to do first is to register and create an account with Wikipedia.org. No fees, no hassles.

However, you will need to know a little about wiki markup language. If you’re familiar with HTML (the basic building blocks of websites), then you have nothing to worry about because wiki markup is very similar. If not, and if you’re really interested, I suggest you view this document to get yourself started.

Wikis can help your business or organization. If you have tons of information to publish online, a wiki is the best way for you to deploy a professional-looking website.

One of the most fitting uses for wikis is knowledge management. For example, let’s say you run a non-government organization that’s concerned with cultural minorities, and you have gigabytes of data regarding the eleven tribes of Davao, their traditions and rituals, their histories, their leaders, etc. You could deploy a wiki and publish articles on every conceivable topic under your NGO’s purview. And since this would be on the Web, linking to relevant pages can be done quite easily, not to mention having the whole knowledge base searchable.

The power of the wiki lies in its qualities: it is geared for collaboration, and its database is highly manageable, even by non-technical people. Plus, it’s affordable: the software itself is free, so all you need to pay for are web hosting and the services of a webmaster. But, if you and your people are comfortable enough with website design, there’s not even a need for a third-party service provider!

Another example of a successfully deployed wiki is WikiPilipinas. It is an emulation of Wikipedia, but is dedicated solely to everything Philippines.

Owned by the Vibal Publishing House, WikiPilipinas is an online repository of Philippine-related information. This project hopes to attract contributors who will publish articles not only in English, but also in Filipino, Cebuano, Ilonggo, Bicolano, Capampangan, Waray and Ilokano. Currently, though, the website only has articles in English and in Filipino.

WikiPilipinas is a worthy endeavor, and I certainly hope that it will forge on and pursue its aim to propagate content in our country’s various languages. (Yes, languages… but that’s for another post altogether.)