I’m wondering about what kinds of engagement communities develop when using wikis versus forums. (I’m always tempted to say fora!)

Perhaps the better question is: what kind of engagement do wikis privilege, and what kind of engagement do forums privilege?

Off the top of my mind, and based on my experience in social media, forums privilege ephemera … quick posts, many posts, and topical material. Most posts are created, read, responded to, and buried in the ongoing flow in a matter of days. Wikis, on the other hand privilege organized information and a slower, longer creation process. Wiki entries might evolve over months or years – in fact, they may never cease evolving, as long as there are people with an interest in the topic.

One would think, therefore, that forums are more community-centric because they are more like conversations. Wikis are more like magazine articles. They are definitely social artifacts, but the process of creating them is not as intensely social. This does not mean, however, that close-knit communities do not develop around wikis – witness the Wikipedia authors’ and curators’ community. But the community seems to happen in a sense beside or around the wiki, whereas forums are the locus of the communities that use them.

The challenge is to go into the world and find out … to observe behavior and test the hypothesis!