Thursday, May 14, 2009

Week 9: Wikis - not as quick as the name makes out

The exploration of wikis has taken me some time . I wondered why as part of the homework we have not been required to start up a wiki, but as I've looked at them, they are a bit more technical than a blog. It seems that special wiki markup language is required when contributing for most of them, and I notice that YPL's wiki has changed into a blog! Does this mean that the wiki editing protocol is a bit too much for the average Jo Blow? Yet, Wikipedia seems to get plenty of input. I think a great use of wikis in the library environment is for knowledge management within the organisation...policy & procedures etc. and general knowledge sharing that would otherwise be stuck in some one's head. A good system of indexing or built-in search engine would make the wikis easier to use. A good, well used wiki is the ALIA "Summer reading club" where public librarians share ideas about program promotions of all sorts (like Library Week). Wikipedia's entry on wikis has very useful tables of comparison of the scores of wiki software providers...it seems to be a minefield with free software & paid for services available. As a tool I think the best application of a wiki is for collaborative works. There seems to be a variety of ways that they can be accessed ...entirely open or closed to just a few people who have the right to edit while other people have read-only access. I haven't had a go at making an entry in a wiki yet...some of them provide a "sandbox" where you can practice & play around with the markup language without fear of messing up anything important. Until I do some playing around in the sandbox I'm not sure if I will be enthusiastically embracing wikis as a tool. I would like to get one going for our family as a place for us to record family history & things that we remember from our childhoods based on subjects. That's a bit further down the track, I think. The spell checker kept on wanting me to change "wiki" to "Kiwi", but I think it's now given up.
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2 comments:

  1. MargaretMay 14, 2009 at 10:50 PM

    Sorry to bang on about what I've done for work but have a look at http://ehliblinks.wikispaces.com/ It's designed to be "the web page you've got when you havn't got a web page" - i.e. the info there is pretty static but it can be changed any time without going through the IT department. It is a bit more fiddly than doing the blog but it's not wildly difficult. I think it would be ideal for your family history.

    Your comment about mark up languages sent me to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Take heart from this bit: "Increasingly, wikis are making "WYSIWYG" ("What You See Is What You Get") editing available to users ...." and ignore the rest of that paragraph!!

    If you uses WikiSpaces http://www.wikispaces.com/ (it's free, no software to download) you type the text you want and format it pretty much as you would in a Word document - no special language to learn or use. I find the fiddliest bit is making a new page and getting the links right. Slow and steady gets you there.

    It's easy to upload photos but they take up a lot of space and are more difficult to arrange 'artistically' on the page. This is where you would have your photos in a Filckr file and linkout to them.

    A bonus is that you can upload Word docs and PDFs - not yet available on Blogger as far as I'm aware ... could be wrong, more options keep getting added all the time.

    As for editing - you can allow as many or as few contributors as you want. For a family history I'd be inclined to get people to send/email things to you so that you can upload the content. Or you could have a small "committee" who all know how to do it, agree on the format and so will maintain the neatness of the site.

    Give it a go! Good luck :-)

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  2. Learning 2.0May 15, 2009 at 9:27 AM

    I can completely understand your apprehension with wikis. I've tested a lot of different free wiki platforms in my search for the "ultimate" and often find them tedious and frustrating in their navigation and ease of use. Wikidot is my favourite at the moment. However, wikis do require a different kind of thought process when updating as they often have differing languages and functions depending on the product.

    I think a wiki for your family history is a brilliant idea and definitely the right kind of platform.

    Fiona

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