In the past, wikis have not worked so well with traditional publications. The Los Angeles Times attempted a "Wikitorial," an editorial that anyone could edit. The fledgling project quickly turned to disaster as the article was spammed with pornography. It cost Michael Kinsley, the man with the idea, his job at the paper.

Another paper in South Dakota began a wikitorial feature of its own, but opted for the safer route of reviewing reader edits before posting them.  

On the other hand, a similar experiment to that of Wired done by Joi Ito of Six Apart worked well. Ito, asked to write an op-ed for the New York Times, posted his first draft on a social editing website where friends made suggestions before Ito sent it on to the Times.    

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and the author of the recently published summer bestseller, "The Long Tail," was all in favor of his magazine's wiki experiment on John Barnako's MarketWatch blog. Anderson used a similar method of gathering information from the audience by posting ideas and sections of his book on a blog where readers were able to make suggestions and give their own ideas of how the book should be written. In the end, Anderson believes the feedback helped him write a better book. So logically he figured, why can't that be done with an article?

We'll find out come September 7 if the wiki results are good enough for publication.  

Source: Frank Barnako's Media Blog