Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Wiki - Discovery

Wiki's are intended to be quick and easy to create, edit and delete. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that the learning curve to produce is low, the time from thought to product is short. However the curses are more numerous.

1. Anyone can alter a post, which has resulted in vandalism of sites. I saw a request for email confirmation on just the few sites that I visited.

2. Quick and easy to do, doesn't mean that it will be a sustained and continually updated page. Many of the pages were either incomplete or outdated. Nothing had been added for a year or more.

3. The idea that everyone is going to contribute often means that no one does.

4. I think they may be useful for collaborating on projects with a tight time line where people need to communicate and update a paper quickly with a defined group of people. The idea of a wiki of book reviews was good, but it changed to having the book reviews attached to the cataloguing record. The small number of reviews in the wiki compared to the number of the books library means the chances of you finding a review would be very small indeed. I think it would be a project that might get some support for a while, but would be hard to create the will and support for a long term effort.

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