Thing 12

I’m also skipping Thing 11 for the moment since I’m in an enforced quiet area at work.  I am a big fan of Pandora, though, and I’m looking forward to giving it the glowing blog treatment it deserves.  But for now, on to wikis . . .

I’ve never used wikis from the administrative side – just as a searcher\reader.  I may be in the minority among information professionals, but I think Wikipedia is fantastic.  I use it all the time, and I think it is one of the best resources out there today for basic, skim-the-surface type research.  I like to start with Wikipedia, investigate the links cited as sources at the bottom of each entry, and then go from there.  It’s a great way jumpstart your research or quickly answer a burning question.  As long as people (especially students) know that research can begin at Wikipedia but shouldn’t end there, I think it’s a wonderful tool.  I’ve never understood all the ire towards it.  Yes, it presents some problems, but those problems are symptomatic of far bigger issues in how people seek and use information today.  Don’t shoot the wiki!

But I digress.  One thing I noticed about the wikis linked from the 23 Things blog was the variation in style.  Several were immediately identifiable as wikis (i.e. they shared their basic format with Wikipedia and other well-known wikis), but some (the Book Lust site in particular) just looked like regular websites.  That raises some questions for me about how to distinguish wikis from websites for users who might not be familiar with the technology and how they can interact with it.

Wikis seem like the perfect environment for online collaboration, but my greatest concern would be maintaining order and consistency when so many people are potentially allowed to edit the site.  Maybe I’m just a control freak, but since I’ve never edited a wiki before, I am curious about how organization is established and maintained on various sites.  I’m going to get the opportunity to work with wikis soon enough, though, as part of my graduate assistantship.  A few professors at Kent are breaking away from the WebCT Vista system and using wikis to host their course materials instead.  You can host readings, assignments, discussion boards, etc.  In this case, the students will have very limited editing privileges, with just myself and the professor as administrators.  They’ll be able to upload assignments and make discussion posts, but won’t be able to alter the fundamental organization of the course wiki.  That’s one solution, but I’d be curious to learn more about others.  It seems unlikely that the “community” will always be able to regulate itself successfully, though Wikipedia seems to be doing a fairly effective job.