Having convinced (myself) that Mediawiki software and Free Licenses do not promote collaboration but merely provides an aggregation of highly individualized decisions about content that hope for a never arriving invisible hand to sort out looking for some alternative software seems in order. Wiki, I am told, is the Hawaiian word for quick. Let's put as much distance as possible between the ideal software for collaboration and wiki. A handy internet resource of uncertain reliability tells me that Pialatok is the Inuit word for slow. Embracing this as antitheses of wiki let's explore what a Pialatok collaborative software might look like.


A minimum set of features:

• A period of mandatory reflection delaying any submission and making it withdrawable by the contributor.
• A opportunity for people who are working on the article or subject matter area of a new article to review a new contribution prior to implementing changes.
• The ability of one or more editors (true sense) to act as project managers and assign tasks.
• A hierarchy of user permissions that provides credentialed or acknowledged knowledgeable contributors greater control and access than those lacking these qualities.
• A content dispute resolution system that fully recognizes expertise and contribution history and is not easily overwhelmed by "outsiders" to the article, subject matter or relevant disciplines.
• A licensing scheme that acknowledges ownership of content by a legal entity responsible for overseeing the overall direction and content of the project.

More thought needs to given to expanding or refining this feature list. Of course this removes the much of the Tom Sawyer Fence Whitewashing that led to the rapid expansion of Wikipedia. This won't work as a huckster's business model but it might provide a tool for promoting real, serious and sustained collaboration.