Why not publish an Idea in the traditional way?

You can publish but it takes a long time. There are a lot of ideas that probably don’t warrant publishing at least not without a lot of time, research and money. There also may not be anywhere you can publish your invention. The most important thing is to get your invention posted and timestamped. Another useful feature is that you might get feedback on references that you didn’t know about. This will assist in determining if it’s worth taking the idea further or publishing it in the traditional way which you still can do. Wikinvents is ideal for collaboration on inventions on a large scale.