Digital Design Blog

Jimmy Wales: Power to the People

This blog post comes live from the Avenue A | Razorfish Enterprise Solutions summit in Boston (26 October 2007). We’re holding the event to examine how companies are adopting web 2.0 design practices inside the workplace. Speakers include Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and Wikia, Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School, Dion Hinchcliffe, and Rob Koplowitz of Forrester Research.

Jimmy Wales just discussed his new superwiki platform, Wikia, which aggregates multiple wikis into one home. He also addressed issues inherent in designing a public open-source wiki and an internal (i.e., employee-only) wiki — for instance, in both cases, the enterprise cedes power of the conversation to the people, whether to consumers or employees. His message to the enterprise: Relax. Enable the conversation.

“The biggest design mistake you can make is to think about all the bad things people will do on your site and design around that worry,” he said. “Doing so just puts up barriers to information sharing in an era of consumer-generated content, Yes, there is a risk. But if you make people accountable through verification, you can manage that risk.”

He compared the situation to someone opening a restaurant and locking all the customers inside individual jail cells to guard against the oft chance of a customer stabbing someone with a steak knife. The obsession with security defeats the purpose of the effort.

Wales stressed the importance of �eventualism�: in an environment where intranets and websites are designed for open use, “sometimes content gets deleted that should not be and things included that should not be included, but eventually the community gets it right.” Blocking ideas is out; now creating a relationship with your consumers and employees is all about managing the art of conversation.

For more information about the Avenue A | Razorfish Enterprise Solutions Summit, please visit The Workplace Blog.