Thing 10: Wikis

I've been familiar with wikis for some time, but I've never edited one before I added a comment to the "23 tihngs" wiki.

Wikis are wonderful tools for collaborative work. The video pointed out how cumbersome email can be in certain situations. But I wonder if I'm the only one who find wikis somewhat cumbersome. For example, the 23 things wiki seemed to be pretty slow--almost unresponsive at times. When I've looked at a couple of others (not for this project) they also seemed slow. I don't think wikis are always the best choice!

The idea of a collective knowledge base is appealing. Also the idea that wikis are self-organizing and self-policing. Procuedure manuals seem like a great application--we all know how quickly procedures evolve. And the people who deal with the application of procedures should be able to add comments that others may find useful or that might clarify confusing situations. Perhaps I'm a sceptic, but I think they would need careful monitoring--first to be sure I kept up with changes, and second, to ascertain that the entries were accurate. One of the entries for this Thing discussed how wikis can be edited by opposing sides of an issue to promote a particular bias. Most of these uses would seem to be fairly obvious. Yet recently I read an article that discussed how some of the edits in Wikipedia articles are more subtle, that seemingly minor edits can substantially change the tone and slant of the entry. I guess that could be true--as we listen to the presidential campaigners, we can't help but notice how powerful a single word can be! It would be interesting to trace the edits of some entries on controversial topics.

I don't think our library catalog has any potential for adding user content, which is too bad. I think this is something our users would embrace. I know I like this aspect of Amazon.com! I think it would be fun to create wikis as public spaces for discussions of interest to communities--books, speakers, issues, events....