My oldest son put together a wiki when he was getting married. He was living in Prince George's County, his now wife was living in Towson, her family lives in York, PA, we were up here in Cecil, and most of the people invited to the wedding lived out of state. It was an easy way to keep the wedding planning on track and keep everyone informed.
His wiki was private, he had to approve membership for anyone who wanted to view it. I see this as a great use for wikis. Using them to coordinate conferences, like the ALA conference, or using them on inTRAnets, makes wikis helpful and beneficial.
Open wikis, though, like the behemoth Wikipedia, are problematic. Stephen Colbert has been banned from Wikipedia for showing his viewers how to contribute to its "truthiness". This link will take you to an op/ed story by someone who was the victim of deliberate - and damaging - false information posted on Wikipedia, for 132 days, while Wikipedia dodged responsibility and took its time correcting the entry.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
Another concern is writer bias skewing the information, possibly away from objective truth. More and more educational entities are not accepting wikipedia as a reference resource on research papers because of the fluidity and potential bias of the information.
I think wikis have great potential as private resources, but are problematic as open venues on the World Wide Web.
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