US Army adopts "wiki" doctrine writing

[dapaterson]

An interesting concept - and interesting way for the US Army to tap into the collective knowledge of its soldiers, vice having a small group of outcasts in a limestone town blather on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/business/14army.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life.

The program uses the same software behind the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and could potentially lead to hundreds of Army guides being “wikified.” The goal, say the officers behind the effort, is to tap more experience and advice from battle-tested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army’s array of colleges and research centers who have traditionally written the manuals.

 

[PMedMoe]

Already posted here, in Foreign Militaries, but not under the US Military sub forum.

 

[Fusaki]

I like to think that we sort of do that here.

Maybe no official PAMs are being written, but the PAM in my head is influenced by the discussion that takes places here - drawing on the personal experience of people up and down the rank structure and across the trades.

Army.ca is the "free market" of ideas.  Ideas are challenged by critical thinkers, thus allowing the good ones to thrive and the bad ones to die out.  Capitalist economics and survival of the fittest are successful because they quickly adapt to change in a dog eat dog world.

And thats really all war is:  A race against the enemy to adapt to a fluid situation.  The "Wikipedia" philosophy facilitates a larger thinktank with a higher bandwidth to transfer information.

 

[dustinm]

As this thread has more posts, I'll be making my reply here (sorry greentoblue.)

The US has been doing this for some time with their "Intellipedia", which allows members of the US Intelligence Community to collaborate and share their knowledge in a secure (intranet?) accessible by all of them, and based off MediaWiki.