The Ugly Wiki?
So the rumour is that Wikis are ugly. Lots of people seem to agree and a good few seem to be cheerfully prepared to engage in the debate. And I'm going to put myself on the line here and say that if any of you were thinking about offering me a job or something and are likely to get cross with me then I'm sorry but I've got to do it... Isn't it obvious that it does not need to be this way? There's no rulebook that says that Wikis have to look the way they do - no creationist spark of godhood that came down from on high and declared this particular appearance of editable websites the perfect one. This statement - that just because there's a bit more of a barrier to architecting a 'prettier' Wiki means that they are inherently ugly - seems to me to be astonishingly strange. It's like blaming evolution for someone's misapplied make-up...
Now I'm not a man who begrudges the visceral / visual aspect of design. I think things should be as beautiful as they are usable. But it's facile, surely, to compare the functionality and potential utility of two different (and potentially incredibly flexible) products and leave with the conclusion that you just like the prettier one!
"I've seen a sneak preview of an edit-this-page type of outliner that Marc Canter is working on, and I like it a lot better. Why? It doesn't hurt to look at it, mostly. Silly? Maybe. But I know I'm not alone."
I think there's a an underlying theme behind a lot of reviews of this kind and it's a rather old fashioned idea of fixed and stable products. The Wiki is considered a thing that works in a way, rather than a rough accumulation of various versions of the same rough concept - each of which has some benefits and some failings. Each of which could be nothing more than the first stage in a longer and more fruitful path of evolution. Each of which could be stripped down to its core and integrated with other sites - small bits of meme DNA grafted into message-boards or weblogs or even more static editorial pages. There is no product to review with finality- there is no here here (as Gertrude Stein might have been misquoted). So we dig around and we take what we like and we make new things - some will bed down and spread, others will not. Many will be spliced with each other once more...
No doubt in the future - now everyone is looking in their direction - Wikis will be even more flexible (or perhaps less flexible but more powerful or easy to use) than they are today. There are an infinite amount of potential developments - incremental or catastrophic - that we could be discussing. And in the meantime, yes, someone could probably find a way of making them prettier as well. In fact, I hope they do. But while we're waiting for someone to do that (or doing it ourselves, in fact) - can't we just try and bring the debate up a notch?
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
Pushback at last. Hallelujah.
I really thought I'd get a lot more response like this one when I posted...and was surprised by the chorus of agreement. Clearly I hit a nerve.
But...there were some very interesting things that emereged in the comments thread, and in some of the discussions elsewhere--like the social software alliance mailing list, for example, where there's been a spirited and interesting discussion about voice and culture and style and collaboration in the context of wikis and blogs, and Joi Ito's blog (link), where there's been discussion of why perceptions of wikis differ so much.
Sometimes a big discussion can be started most effectively through mention of a small--even trivial--thing. That seems to be what happened here, which is a good thing.
→ Posted by: Liz Lawley at May 1, 2003 2:37 AM
Ooops. Just noticed you linked to Joi. Sor-ry. (Would be nice to be able edit one's comment as easily as one can edit one's blog, don't you think?)
→ Posted by: Liz Lawley at May 1, 2003 2:42 AM
Wikis work, and don't need to be designed. But the option is there to design them as you want to. They are inherently simple pieces of software and therefore can be customised to whatever design you want.
→ Posted by: Tom Morris at May 1, 2003 2:22 PM
Of course they need to be designed. I would dearly love to be able to roll out project-centric wiki's across a corporate-client extranet but the standard of presentation is one of the big stumbling blocks here. After one failed attempt at doing this, I'll be holding back until it becomes 'movable type easy'. Which is a shame.
→ Posted by: paulpod at May 1, 2003 7:22 PM
Tom Coates and Tom Morris, you both have said what I feel about wikis.
Liz, would be nice to be able edit one's comment as easily as one can edit one's wiki, don't you think? ;-}
Best, Mark
→ Posted by: MarkDilley at May 2, 2003 7:47 AM
I always laugh every time I read some so-called smart guy whine about how ugly wikis are because they use the default font or something equally ridiculous. If the diligent had concerned themselves with analysis like that, the World Wide Web would have never made it past interlaced GIFs.
That being said, comments about the interface are another thing entirely. It may or may not surprise you, but there has been a lot of thought that has gone into interface design for wikis. That doesn't mean that they're perfect, of course. Work continues.
→ Posted by: Sunir at May 2, 2003 10:55 AM
Some of the thoughts to which Sunir (of Meatball Wiki and InterWiki) may be referring can be found on Ward's Wiki. That being said, UseMod is one of the plainer janes among WikiEngines. I would echo the paulpod need of MovableType easy style in a WikiEngine. (To complete another circle) LizLawley mentioned the JoiIto blog. There also is a discussion similiar to this one on JoiItoWiki except Join uses the term ButtUgly.
→ Posted by: JonathanSmith at May 2, 2003 2:21 PM
It should be noted that UseModWiki is plain by design, not for lack of effort. We like to keep our FeatureKarma off the floor.
→ Posted by: Sunir at May 2, 2003 11:25 PM
I have to say Liz, I get the impression that you wrote that post simply to get traffic for the Many-to-many weblog. While I have no doubt that it worked, I'm frankly a bit disappointed by your tactics. It's a bit too much tabloid journalism trolling for my liking, and I care about this stuff and would like to try not to let the discussion get diverted unnecessarily into trivial argument... I feel kind of ridiculous and a bit embarrassed for having fallen for this kind of strategy and - in the process - a little less likely to listen to your opinions in future. I'm sorry, but it just seems a bit cheap to me...
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at May 3, 2003 8:43 PM
This seems unnecessarily harsh Tom. Unless you'd seen the same demo (of Marc's thingy) that Liz has, how do you know they are not comparable? And if they are compar*able*, what's the problem with preferring the better looking one merely because it is better looking? (Even given certain differences in functionality.)
I could disable the css file you use for this site, but I don't because I think it looks nice. And I'd rather use something that looks nice.
→ Posted by: Stewart Butterfield at May 6, 2003 11:18 PM
I can't believe I finally got you to post a comment to my site and that the first thing I've done is make you angry with me! It's great and terrible at the same time and I feel a bit awful and guilty. I don't want to sound aggressive, I really don't, and I know I can come across that way in writing, so I'm going to apologise straight off for that both to Stewart and to Liz - but at the same time I think it's important to remember that Liz has already declared herself spoiling for a bit of a debate around this ("Pushback at last. Hallelujah." - her words). Back to the issue at hand though - I think if they were comparable kinds of products - ie. a wiki was a thing that existed in one state as produced by one company rather than being a generic term for a range of different products (and each self-organised, run and adapted by different groups of people) then such a comparison would be totally reasonable. But we know there are varieties of wikis around, different styles of running them and ones that look different as well. In fact the only unifying aspects of wikis are the 'edit this page' functionality and the inbuilt version control. The fact that Marc's thing isn't called a Wiki is probably reason enough to believe that it has technical / infrastructural and UI differences of some kind - and the fact that it's also called an outliner is a bit of a clue too. So if we're assuming that we're talking about the future of social software rather than the present and we're also working on the principle that they way these products look is probably the easiest possible thing about them to change (much easier than how they work), then it seems to me that our responsibility is towards judging them in terms of what they do, noting the failings in appearance separately and then trying to encourage people to tart up the one that works best, rather than choosing the one that's just been best tarted-up...
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at May 7, 2003 12:42 AM
So, Stewart pointed me back here to see the latest comments. (Say, can I ask why you don't want line or paragraph breaks in comments? It made that last one a good bit harder to read...) I was more than a little hurt by your comments about me above. I most certainly did not write the original post "simply to get traffic." I wrote the post because I thought it was worth saying. In fact, I was a little worried about posting it because I knew that it might not be received well by people who are heavily vested in wikis as a business tool (in particularly, I thought it might be bad form to post it on M2M when Ross was one of my co-authors). In the end, I decided to post it despite my fears because I really hoped that if people disagreed it would set off a useful debate or discussion. That's why I was initially so happy to see your post--while I didn't agree, I really did want to see the kinds of rich and interesting discussions that ended up happening here, in the comments on M2M, and on Joi's blog (among other places). But there's a big difference, I think, between welcoming pushback and "tabloid journalism trolling." You're not the only person who "cares about this stuff." At the end of the day, I really don't give a rat's ass about traffic--I don't track it, I'm not motivated by it. I care about the ideas, and the engagement, and the exchange. And I care, too, when someone unfairly accuses me of shoddy behavior--and does it in such a public way.
→ Posted by: Liz at May 8, 2003 3:17 AM
In which case - you have my immediate apologies, Liz - the only reason I commented is because I had got the initial impression from your first post above that the existence of a debate was more important than any substance that could be gleaned from it. As such, my first reaction was one of embarrassment and frustration that I could be gamed so easily. But all that changes immediately if you are more interested in the substance - and I think I can accept you on your word! So - I'm terribly sorry - it was an immediate and visceral reaction that I withdraw whole-heartedly.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at May 8, 2003 9:38 AM
Thanks, Tom. Apology accepted. The criticism only stung because I really respect your writing and ideas. Glad we can move on.
→ Posted by: Liz at May 9, 2003 12:12 AM