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# wiki-edited journalism
- URL: https://onemanandhisblog.com/2006/09/wired_news_the/
- Published: 2006-09-07T17:52:26.000Z
- Updated: 2015-04-08T09:27:40.000Z
- Author: Adam Tinworth

Do you know what a Wiki is? I suspect most people who read this drivel do, even if the majority of the general public don’t. But Wikis are, in theory, all about the general public: letting anyone edit a page of a website, on the basis that the wisdom of crowds will be greater than the wisdom of an individual.

To test this theory, a [Wired News journalist](http://www.wired.com/storylist/742-0-0.html?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) put up [an article on Wikis on a Wik](https://www.eu.socialtext.net/wired/index.cgi?action=revision%5Fview%3bpage%5Fname=original%5Funedited%5Farticle%3brevision%5Fid=20060828212205&ref=onemanandhisblog.com)i as an experiment to see how community participation could improve (or not) an article. He sums up the experience in [The Wiki That Edited Me](http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71737-0.html?tw=rss.index&ref=onemanandhisblog.com). Was it a success?

> Is it a better story than the one that would have emerged after a Wired News editor worked with it?
> 
> I think not.
> 
> The edits over the week lack some of the narrative flow that a Wired News piece usually contains. The transitions seem a bit choppy, there are too many mentions of companies, and too much dry explication of how wikis work.

The conclusion – that Wikis are good tools for creating reference documents, but poor ones for creative the sort of narratives that journalism thrives on, isn’t really a surprise. The journalist’s job is just as much about shaping facts into a narrative as it is gathering those facts in the first place.

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