Virtual Community Health Promotion

ESSAY Suggested citation for this article: Crespo R. Virtual community health promotion. Prev Chronic Dis [serial online]. 2007 Jul [date cited]. Available from: The " wiki " and open-source phenomena are transforming the way knowledge is generated and shared around the world. The word wiki is from the Hawaiian term wiki-wiki, which means to do something quickly (1). The term became prominent because of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), which now has more than 2 million articles contributed by tens of thousands of people. People in so many fields are using Internet communities that the term wiki has come to refer to an online group that collectively works on a project. In the business world, the wiki concept is called wikinomics (1). Even U.S. spy agencies are using a wiki-like online community, Intellipedia, on which people with U.S. security clearances can update each other on security matters (2). The term open source refers to software codes that are available online to anyone who wants to know how the software works. Traditionally, this kind of information was considered proprietary and kept highly secret. However, the treatment of such information is changing. Proctor & Gamble (P&G), for example, is opening up its research and development division by inviting entrepreneurs to design new products online. Today thousands of entrepreneurs work on product ideas for P&G through the Internet, and one entrepreneur recently earned a royalty of more than a half million dollars from P&G (1). In another example of online collaboration, professors from the Wharton School of Business and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are writing a business book online, and more than 1000 people have signed up to participate (3). In addition, MIT is now providing free Internet access to all of its course material through a program called MITOpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu). Community participation is central to all the wiki and open-source applications. Because people can participate in creating a product, whether an encyclopedia or a gadget , they feel a sense of community and a commitment to what they have created (4). For example, an online company called Threadless (www.threadless.com) prints T-shirts that contributors design online. Contributors submit their designs, which are then voted on by registered users of Threadless, and the designs with the highest scores get printed. The designers and company share the profits. Threadless now has a community of 400,000 registered users who vote on the T-shirt designs. According …