An online collaboration environment combining wave and wiki features.
Introduction
In 1994 Ward Cunningham developed the first wiki software. Ever since, many amazing online collaboration projects have been powered by wiki softwares.
But in reality, the vast majority of people attracted to the wiki world only read the content available on wiki webpages. Most people didn't contribute with new content to the wiki sites they visited.
In 2010 Google may change this scenario by launching Wave, an open source communication and collaboration protocol that combines e-mail, chat, social networking and wiki.
Wave is a very user-friendly tool and any Internet user will be able to use it. It is certainly the disruptive innovation that will impact the online collaboration world by enabling many more individuals to collaboratively share knowledge online.
Wikipedia's case
Wikipedia, with more than 330M unique visitors every month, is certainly the most notorious case of a collaborative project using wiki software.
Although "anyone can edit" Wikipedia, less than 0.05% of its visitors contribute with new content to it.
MediaWiki, the software used by Wikipedia since 2001, has incorporated a number of incremental innovations developed by a very active community of people around the globe. Nonetheless, most of Wikipedia's editors and almost all potential new contributor still complain about its usability.
Objective
The WaveWiki initiative aims to combine the learnings and the experience of the wiki world with the disruptive innovation that the wave protocol will bring to online collaboration.
Instead of adding wave's features to any existing wiki software, the initiative could incorporate all wiki features to wave's open-source protocol. The believe is that this new protocol will be adopted very fast by Internet users willing to collaborate online, including those that today use wiki softwares.
If existing free knowledge projects like Wikipedia incorporate the new wave+wiki protocol, there would be a strong increase in the number of people contributing to the "world where any person can freely share in the sum of all human knowledge", envisioned by the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia.
Timeline
In July 2009, an initial financial support was given by Google to Thomas Maaswinckel and a group of developers from the Netherlands. They agreed to integrate a small number of wiki features to the wave protocol until the end of September, when Google will extend the preview of GoogleWave to 100,000 users.
In August 2009, many developers and free knowledge activists attending Wikimania Conference in Argentina decided to join the initiative. Most of them can now have access to the preview of GoogleWave and check its features.
Another round of financial support is under negotiation with several organizations and individuals. The resources would enable developers to integrate more wiki features to the wave protocol until the end of the year. The idea is that the wave protocol should be launched to the public already with most of the wiki features required by the wiki world.