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Comment by misterbwong | Hacker News Reader

Maybe someone could shed some light on this for me, but what's the value of this over, say, a wiki? Other than email support, which could or could not be worth it, the value to the organization seems to be the same: it's an easily searchable and editable knowledgebase.

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Wikis can be daunting to average folks.

If Opzi works like Facebook and Quora -- gently prodding people to answer with feeds and Bacn and Toast [1], and giving logical/browsable forms to activity -- it could get a lot more participation.

The wiki 'titled article' wasn't the end-all, but rather the beginning, of a universe of possible user-built-corpora organizational strategies. And the wiki 'recent changes' feed wasn't the end-all, but rather the beginning, of a universe of ways to report activity to, and stir activity by, interested parties.

[1] See http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why-goog... for definitions of 'Bacn' and 'Toast' in context.

Agreed with everything you say here, except I'd add one thing: It's not just for "average folks" either. From what I understand, there used to be a YC Wiki that was used actively among founders in each batch to share information with each other. This previous batch, nobody touched the Wiki after the first week. Everyone just used the YC Opzi. This was not out of loyalty: I've grit my teeth and used some raw, unpolished products of other YC companies, and this wasn't that. The Opzi was just much, much more convenient. No time was wasted formatting the page or organizing sub-topic pages. It was much easier to discover interesting content and get notified when interesting questions were answered, which was more often because the Q&A format does a better job of encouraging people to answer unanswered questions than a Wiki.

This is a space I've been thinking about and coding for.

I have not been able to test out Opzi, my comments are based on using Quora and the work I've been doing.

I think that the wiki model of aggregating knowledge has certain deficiencies that can be improved by systems implemented by companies like Quora and Opzi.

One of them is the identification of experts after the fact. Take forums and wikis for example. A user is identified as an expert only after contributing to the system.

With systems like Quora and Opzi, experts and their knowledge is focused early on. This is done formally by participants filling up their profile and expressing their areas of interest. This is done informally by askers directing questions to other users of the system.

Identification of experts early on is really useful because it helps those who desire knowledge to pull that knowledge out of those who have it by initiating contact as opposed to a wiki where those who desire knowledge wait around for those experts to contribute.

Asking is a great way to pull knowledge. It is active as opposed to the passivity of waiting for the required information to just show up.

One could possibly add game mechanics to 'encourage' experts to contribute to a wiki or knowledge base. By why go the roundabout way. Why not just ask the expert? I believe most people within an organization would be willing to respond if asked to share.

Second, don't underestimate email support. Lots of knowledge is trapped in email. If I enter an email thread late, I would need to read a whole email thread to understand the context of the discussion. And imagine if a responder had deleted the previous email when replying. The previous thread is lost. That knowledge is 'lost'.

Being able to direct a question using email, collecting the responses and aggregating it on a single page will be very helpful.

What was the value of blogger over, say, geocities?

Sometimes structure adds value, and the most general tool is not the best.

Presumably roughly the same as the difference in value between Quora itself and a wiki.

Observing Quora's success I'd say it's a combo of two things:

a) Game mechanics to drive participation.

b) Ability for contributors to be moderated by their peers in a simpler (lazier) fashion than your typical Wiki which is less transparent,

Who needs Dropbox when you can just run rsync?

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