If you know absolutely nothing about wikis, you're only a half step behind me. Other than perusing Wikipedia a few times, I don't think I'd even seen a wiki until a few months ago when a number of readers began writing me with essentially the identical suggestion. Why not have a "Reader Advocate" wiki where readers can express their experiences, problems, factual observations, endorsements, and -- of course -- gripes about vendors?

In its purest form, a wiki is a website that is open to all comers to read, edit, post, and makes comments on the content. Because it's so easy to change the content, and to change the changes, ultimately only the valuable stuff survives. Knowing my readers as well as I do after all these years, the more I heard about wikis, the more I had to agree that it sounds like a very, very good fit.

When I published last week's poll on anti-virus software vendors, I noted that the most valuable part of that article would not be what I had to say or the poll results but the comments readers would post about the products. If you haven't read that commentary yet, I'd recommend you do so, because my prediction proved very true. And it's that kind of content - making it easier for readers to produce and access it -- that is what this wiki experiment is all about.

So as a starting point, let's see how the Gripe Wiki works as a forum for an even better discussion about the product alternatives in the anti-virus software arena. I've posted a short and rather lame "anti-virus software overview" story on the Gripe Wiki. I hope you'll make the story itself better, but more important are the links at the bottom of the page to the stories on each of the products. (Another thing I predicted correctly last week was that I'd leave some popular ones off the poll, so I've added ones that readers have told me about since.) Follow the link to the story about your favorite - or your least favorite - and tell us what we should know about it.

If you're not very familiar with how wikis work, just click on the edit tab to see how others did what you want to do. You'll catch on pretty quick. And don't worry if you break something - somebody will be along to fix it. The important thing is to help us make this a resource that works for you.

Those of you who do know something about wikis are probably already asking a number of questions: How is this going to be structured? What should the top-level categories be? Should we really allow virtually everyone to post, edit, or delete virtually anything? How are we going to keep the link spammers and guerilla marketers from having a field day? Where does a tale of DRM gone out of control, a support horror story, or an analysis of a nasty EULA belong? Can gripes and praise for a product go in the same story? Are discussion tabs for editing arguments only, or can they be used to discuss the merits of a product or practices of a vendor?

And the answer to all those questions is ... well, I don't know for sure. I have a few thoughts on those topics, but to start with we're going to try to leave it as open and unstructured as possible. The anti-virus project should at least serve as a good proving ground for the approaches we might take in other product categories and with other kinds of subject matter.

In other words, I could try to tell you the best way for us to do it, but I would no doubt get almost all of it wrong. So come to GripeWiki.com and you show us how it should be done. That's what this experiment in reader advocacy is all about.