The World's Biggest Book on Community

What happens when a bunch of people from all over the place contribute to write a book? No, it's not called a publishing company. It's called a book wiki, and precisely that is what this project is about. Quoting from their site:

We Are Smarter Than Me has been formed to prove that the community can write a compelling book better than individual experts.

... this book is being written by, and for, the community. The Founders have begun the writing process, but the text you see is alive. All registered members may edit, add and delete content at will. Just click the "edit" link at the base of each chapter's text and you're on your way.

Sounds like Wikipedia? It's because the concept is similar, just applied to publishing, a pretty novel experiment as far as I can tell.

I received an invite to participate in the project (something that has me very excited) from the people over at Wharton School Publishing, who have published numerous books I've had the chance of writing a review for in the past couple of years.

The focus of the book, tentatively titled We Are Smarter Than Me, is serving as a guide to the landscape of community knowledge and the identification of key principles to harness it.

To ensure the success of the venture, they've also enlisted some additional resources to provide support in the form of an advisory committee of faculty and industry experts, led by Tom Malone, a senior faculty member at MIT who heads up the Collective Intelligence Laboratory. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has agreed to serve as a member of the Advisory Board as well.

If this sounds appealing to you, I say join in to become a part of what will become the world's biggest book on community in 2007.