Headshift has a very insightful post, “about the role social tools and the Internet as a whole are having on publishing in general.” The post asks whether collaborative authoring and knowledge construction produces higher quality content faster, or just gives it a place to languish in the face of endless indecision; whether a community should try to build consensus or stick to one point of view and let others dissent later.

I think these questions are largely the same regardless of whether a book is constructed online or offline, by two people or two hundred, and there is no one answer. Some books build consensus and look at an issue from multiple perspectives, and others explore just one perspective in great depth; both are necessary tools to understand a topic. Some technology-based collaborations result in great, cohesive, well-thought out books and others don’t.

I’d argue that this has more to do with people than technology. Just using a wiki won’t ensure a successful collaboration but assembling a community with a common purpose and agreeing on guidelines for collaboration sets the foundation on which wiki-based collaboration can be wildly successful and produce something of unique and unmatched value.

When my coauthors and I set out to write Using Wiki in Education, I had personally discussed the focus of the book with each of them to establish that common purpose, but left the specific subject of each chapter to evolve over time. We agreed on the basic elements that all chapters should include, but again this was kept as simple possible with no more structure than necessary, in keeping with one of the most fundamental principles of wiki. This set the stage for the wiki itself to be a very productive construction platform, and then an ideal community platform once the book was “published” – that is, released to the public on the same wiki where it was constructed, so that it would be a constantly changing, organically evolving process.

The rise of social software means we’re in uncharted territory. Books won’t disappear but the motivations for writing a print book will change as it becomes apparent that some books make more sense as collaborative, socially constructed works. I think we may see the traditional print book become the place for individual analysis of a topic, and the online, wiki-based book become the place to collect a variety of information, much as Using Wiki in Education is a collection of case studies from experts in a variety of different situations.