A wiki is defined as, "a freely expandable collection of interlinked Web pages, a hypertext system for storing and modifying information — a database, where each page is easily editable by any user with a forms-capable Web browser client". They are a little like blogs in that they were first developed by the open source community as a means for enabling personal publishing and sharing.

David Mattison, in the April issue of Searcher Magazine has written an extensive article covering the Wiki community and many of the applications that currently use the technology. Overall the article is informative but David's casual style and meandering can make the topic a little confusing for people who are not familiar with discussions on open source projects. The article is almost certainly better to read online than in print since the extensive use of links is easier to navigate (not to mention read) online. Wikis, while not something I intend to mention during my PIUG keynote next month, are one of those potentially useful technologies coming out of the open source community that could help create the type of collaborative space that I have suggested would be very useful to the patent analysis community. As an example of a potential application, Frank van der Steur suggested on the PIUG mailing list (click here for the message from the Derwent hosted PIUG archive) that the patent searching community would benefit from the shared creation of a synonym database. While some may argue the usefulness of the initial idea, it is clear to me that a project of this type involving open sharing and a possible moving target is one that would be well served by a Wiki. It will be interesting to see if the patent searching and analysis community can be persuaded to work together and share on projects like this in the future.