The Wiki

Check out the Wiki! What you may ask is a Wiki? Well it is a few things, number one a way to collaborate on documentation about anything. The general Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia.

Any person can go and find an entry, then update it. So if you are an expert on Dinosaurs, you can go and add in some knowledge on them for the rest of the world to read. Others can come in and correct your bad spelling, or delete things that they don't think are accurate.

A community is built that fosters constant knowledge improvement. Instead of 20 experts writing for Britanica or World book, we have 1000 dinosaur experts writing on all aspects of them. The work is constantly improving and expanding, and growing in more detail than any encyclopedia you can buy otherwise.

Sure people can come in and delete whole pages, but then the other dinosaur experts get an email notification and revert back to the previous version.

On another front it is taking your discussion board forums, and moving them to the next level, software developers create a product, then create a Wiki, and fill it in with basic text. The users of the software then come in and write the rest of the documentation for you! Which in turn helps the new users to get the most value out of the software, reduce your support calls, and overall improve the software.

Long live Wiki.