Week 7 Thing 17 Sandbox

So, it turns out that, like RSS feeds, wikis aren't nearly as complicated as I thought they would be. However, I can still totally understand that they have the potential to make people nervous - what if I accidentally delete someone else's very well-thought out and meaningful comment? But I can see where they definitely have uses for planning - rather than compiling a huge email list, everyone involved just adds the wiki to their feedreaders and gets informed instantly when someone makes a change. As a person who finds out about most social gatherings through Facebook invites rather than phone calls or invitations, I can see that kind of use going over well.

Week 7 Thing 16 Wikis

Wiki Wiki wild wild west . . .

Well, I feel that I have a better understanding now of wikis and how they are used effectively. I loved the Rochester NY wiki that showed visitors all of the cool stuff residents really enjoy. I know we just revamped our community information database, and it's definitely very nice, but I loved the idea of using a wiki for that information - that way the webmaster doesn't have to add every organization individually, information gets posted instantly, and if a change needs to be made it can come straight from the source. I also like that wikis give ownership to the users - perhaps that is why they maintain their standards so well, deleting spam and inappropriate content, because the users care about the site and take care of their own. I'm a big fan of Wikipedia, and while I certainly don't recommend it to children for a research resource, I sometimes mention it to adults looking for general information on a topic in addition to other more traditional resources, and I definitely use it myself when I need a definition while on-desk (for example, several months ago while reading a Library Journal, I hopped onto Wikipedia for a definition of "Library 2.0"!) At the same time, our branch manager started a wiki for favorite books which I have yet to contribute to, because I'm afraid of screwing it up!