I have seen the short story Wikihistory linked from a lot of places (first, I think, from Boing Boing) and finally went and read it – it’s short and amusing so you should check it out too. It does a nice job playing with online conversation structures; I think that this format for this particular story lays out all of the information you want to know about this scenario in a very compact way. I do not think I would have wanted a longer-form version of the story. I definitely like the use of the “n00b” as a justification for dialog explaining what ought to be common knowledge about the world of the story.
One thing that did strike me was that I found the title misleading – I understand it is just a title and meant to be evocative but there was nothing that felt Wiki-like to this story and its structure or content. I found myself trying to figure out why this dialog would be specific to a forum associated with a Wiki and what the overall content of that Wiki would be and came to the conclusion that I was over thinking it and the Wiki portion was just meant to hint at the on-line nature of the interaction in the title. Or am I missing something?
Glimpses of the websurfing habits of a computer science professor, obsessive crafter, occasional gamer, and all around geek
I presume the Wiki in the title refers to the fact that the characters are (1) editing history just as one might edit a Wikipedia page and (2) are having endless arguments in a discussion forum much as people who edit wikipedia pages argue endlessly about minutia on the discuss pages (although those aren’t usually in chat room form), per se. That would be my thought, anyway.
That makes sense to me – particularly the bit about editing history and having to restore it in much the same way you edit a Wiki page. I only really saw the forum parallel to start, and it the style didn’t feel that different from any mailing list or Usenet group or other online forum.