Collaboration and Process

Clay Shirky writes the following in his piece about, “Wikis, Grafitti, and Process:”

“A wiki in the hands of a healthy community works. A wiki in the hands of an indifferent community fails. The software makes no attempt to add ‘process’ in order to keep people from doing stupid things. Instead, it provides more flexibility, a crazy amount of flexibility, and intoxicating amount of flexibility, allowing massive amounts of stupidity and intentional damage to be done, at will, by roving and anonymous posters. And it provides rollback.”

Indeed, a healthy community doesn’t need a formalize process or a highly specialized set of tools to successfully collaborate. Like water or electricity, they will find a way through the muck; it may not be the most efficient or elegant, but it will certainly get from point-to-point.