As someone who uses wikipedia as quick and dirty reference source for non-critical reference work, it is cool to have a place to look up things and to have people contribute their knowledge. That said the big problem with public wikis are of course who is doing the contribution and what is their authority on the subject.
Looking over a couple of Wikis, I was surprised that the EBM Librarian wiki's creators don't have their professional profile listed. Do we take their word that they are who they say they are?
The Hawaii Pacific Chapter of MLA is using a Wiki to provide pre MLA09 information for possible attendees. http://mla09.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
Using the wiki has made it possible for the chapter members to all contribute to the site.
Public Wikis are a problem for hospitals. (HIPPA again) Supposedly, our IM department has a Wiki feature for our Intranet software that allows collaborations. I for one will be happy when it comes up as hopefully will allow updating of materials to be quicker than to have to use the tracking feature on MS Word. At least this way those people who are the responsible type can make their updates in a timely manner and others will have no excuse except "too busy" to get work done :)
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