Self-organising websites for self-organising groups and networks

Traditional websites work on the broadcast model. A few people are the 'webmasters', and what they write is read by their 'audience'. Wikis are different: they use a conversation model instead. Anyone can edit, and communication between participants is encouraged. Groups without hierarchies can find their own structure mirrored in the way that wikis function, making them an effective organisational tool.

I'm a member of a co-operative that is setting up an eco-friendly land project, and we use one wiki for almost everything. The agendas and minutes of our meetings are all on the wiki. Any research done by a working group is typed straight into the wiki. Even project management, allocating tasks to individuals and groups, happens on the wiki.

It's an amazingly useful resource. So much so, that we are starting to think we should make it publicly available. In a very short space of time, the wiki has developed to contain most of the information you'd need to set up a similar land project. Want to know the price of beech saplings? Or how long asparagus takes to become commercially viable? Or the best way to encourage pollinating insects onto your veg patch? It's all on the wiki.

Wikis are fast, because they are self-organising. Normal websites are slow, because you have bottlenecks. In fact, the name comes from 'wiki wiki', Hawaiian for quick.

This is in stark contrast to a normal website. Typically a small number of people will be the gatekeepers, controlling who adds what information to the site. The logic being that you need some kind of filtering to stop any old rubbish ending up on your website.

Normal sites implement an authoritarian ethos: the group cannot be trusted to use the website well, so we need a small authority to control what goes up. Wikis implement an anti-authoritarian ethos: the group works best when nobody is in charge and everybody is engaged in the project.