Wiki Waka

A Maori (of New Zealand) watercraft is called a waka.

My journey among the wikis leads me to believe that their purpose is more serious than the name suggests (same with wakas among Maori.) I think their best potential is illustrated in the Commoncraft video linked from Learning at Lane. Wikis are an improvement over e-mail when a group needs to craft plans, policy, manuals or do some of the inital work on a collaborative document.

For a reference librarian, that leads to the Wikipedia black hole. An encyclopedia is a collaboratively written document that requires a lot of editing, but I bridle at calling a Wikipedia an encyclopedia.

Decisions made when an invidudal, or group collaboratively, writes an article are necessary fixed in time, until the process is revisited. The wiki alows endless revisions by whoever notices a need for one, and so has the advantage of currency. However I think this more open and open-ended process has some pitfalls. The wikipedia article we read on Library 2.0 was informative, workmanly but I felt is missed the mark in really summing up all sides of this new, unformed and somewhat controverisal issue. It did not present an educated guess at future directions. I felt the article held back more than an invidual author would in addressing Library 2.0.

I hope that we won't confuse Wikipedia's role with that of reference works where authority, authorship, carefully considered and balanced writing are important. I really doubt that everyone's endless input is equivalent to an author's craft.

Perhaps more sophisicated users of wikis know how to get around the "everyone's opinion becomes no opinion" problem via discussion (in chatrooms? listservs? bulletin boards? oh, no!) and consensus before posting. But if you limit the enless edit, is it still a wiki?

Not to say that an online, free encyclopedia is not a good idea. The New Georgia Encylcopedia is an excellant example of one, the main difference being these articles are written by an invited author, often an expert on the topic.

I think the idea of using wikis for the subject guides is excellant, both to help hook students by giving them a chance to add sources and to make them easier to update. While S.G.'s require a lot of editing, knowledge and experience, they do not call for the kind of writing found in an encyclopedia article. In my opinion, use of the Wikis would improve these documents, certainly worth a look.

Similarly, I'd like to try using a wiki to craft a policy or planning document and see how this tool would help. However, I don't want to throw face-to-face discussion out with the long meetings, multiple photocopies and penciled in revisions. Humans evolved a lot more slowly than technology!

Blogs, wikis and even flicker all address the need for people without web design knowledge (like me!) to make websites (like this.) Employing many hands/minds in adding useful content to the web is a good thing, usually.

I created a Wiki for my Paris and Provence group, no one in the group has posted anything yet!

You'll notice I did not link to Wikipedia, that was intentional.