Waiting by the River at Dawn
By: Barnaby Dorfman
Published: November 9, 2009

Christopher Kimball threw down the proverbial glove and issued a "Wiki vs. Test Kitchen Challenge" on October 15th. I publicly accepted within hours, but after 3 weeks, we still haven't heard back. I left blog comments, @tweets, and submitted a private message via Cook's Illustrated. I've seen no additional announcements, and though others accepted publicly, none came from a Wiki. Further, it's clear that his post was in response to The New York Times and TIME Magazine articles about recipe Wikis that featured Foodista and quote both of us.

Dueling Pistols image courtesy of Nfutvol
Though the idea of this challenge seems to have fallen by the wayside, the resulting discussion has been fascinating. I've observed a lot of confusion about how the Web works and what a Wiki is vs. a blog, a search engine, or other types of web technologies. This is the first in a series of posts where I will share some of what I've learned from 13 years of building large scale websites and a prior career in cooking.
So what exactly is a Wiki? Well, the whole concept is less than 10 years old and there are a number of definitions, but they all share these elements:

Is accessed via a Web browser
Facilitates easy creation and publishing of web pages
Enables large numbers of people to edit the SAME page
Links between pages
Reports on who edited what pages and when

Print has been a medium used to convey knowledge for thousands of years, including recipes. Indeed, some of the earliest surviving cookbooks date back to the Romans, including De re coquinaria, from circa the 4th century. Gutenberg later used technology to create a new medium: mechanical printing. Replacing legions of scribe monks, his press had a major impact on the business of the printed word when it massively reduced the cost of each additional copy produced. Cookbooks quickly grew to be a significant part of the overall printing industry. Over time, more mechanization continued to lower costs to the point where hundreds of pages can be had for pennies.
Still, printing has a number of limitations relative to a Wiki. Here are a few points of comparison:
Print

Cannot be changed once produced
Expensive:

Additional cost to every copy
Cost increasing, especially when considering the environmental impact


Slow to produce and distribute
Invisible editorial process
Disconnected, getting more information/context is difficult

Wikis

Pages are continuously improved
Inexpensive and getting cheaper, cost of each copy is close to zero
Fast to produce, publishing is instant
Open and transparent editorial process
Connected, more detail is just a click away

This is not meant to be an attack on print, in fact I have a large and treasured cookbook collection. However, I feel it is also important to point out some of cost/benefit issues missing from the debate.
Upcoming Post: Quality and Accuracy in Wikis

Comments:
Jonathan
November 9, 2009

Very interesting post!  I look forward to reading more of your thoughts on this topic.
I have one minor correction about wiki history.  The concept of a wiki is somewhat older than 10 years.  The venerable Ward Cunningham developed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb" rel="nofollow">WikiWikiWeb</a> in 1994.
Wikipedia has some interesting articles about the history of wikis, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki#History" rel="nofollow">here</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis" rel="nofollow">here</a>.
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