EVEN MORE ON WIKIS

We've seen how wikis work. Now it's time to move on to more about the way of the wiki (sounds like a dodgy kung-fu ICT comic). They can be used as business tools, educational resources and research databases and much, much more. The most popular individual use is for people trying to write books because wikis are easier to manage than lots of little bits of paper. Here's some interesting stuff about wikis.

BUSINESS

A software solutions company called Atlassian has a blog and one of the posts relates to wikis and their potential within business. I found this a little dull but I reckon that it would probably be more interesting if I was a hotshot entrepreneur. Look for yourself here.

Another use of wikis within businesses is for customer support. The Lenovo ThinkPad, a laptop, has a wiki that lets customers share their problems (Unhappy ThinkPadders Anonymous, perhaps?) and learn more about new software for their ThinkPad. I thought that this was really clever because it lets ThinkPad users talk to each other and help each other learn as well as providing a forum for problem solving, which is one of the key principles behind wiki. The page has been accessed almost 2 million times, so it must be doing something right.

EDUCATION

The wiki is a great way of learning - we know that already. There are some good examples of this when it comes do education. Last year the SPS Physics A-level candidates started a wiki so that they could start pages and then edit each others' in the hope that they could help each other revise. Judging from the results, it worked.

The Auburn University School of Architecture started a wiki called Design Studio, giving students the chance to get ideas out there instead of trying to collaborate in the somewhat stilted atmosphere of the classroom. It is pretty impressive - you can see that it means something to the students and that they care about the stuff they are doing and want to help each other. For some reason architecture students find it easier to collaborate and make deep and meaningful philosophical and architectural observations when slobbing about in tracky bottoms instead of the classroom. Who'd have thought it?

RESEARCH

The potential for wikis as a research facility is plain to see. If you can talk to scientists over the web about a new species of platypus or something then it's going to be much more efficient than snail mail or email. The Science Museum started a wiki (see it here) that contains information about some 250 objects within the museum. Anyone can visit the site, which is really easy to use, and find out about these objects. This works very well as a wiki because it makes it very easy to edit it to include the knowledge that scientists continually gather.

There's also an interesting essay by Harvard Law professor David Weinberger on this concept, saying that "students shouldn't be reading textbooks, they should be writing them" - read it here. The idea behind this is that in a way sort of similar to blogs instead of being passive sponges soaking up knowledge, wikis make the harvesting of knowledge and interactive process - I give knowledge, he gives knowledge and together the whole is almost greater than the sum of its parts. Give students the information and put the onus on them to create a coherent wiki among themselves so that it helps them. That way if it's rubbish, they still learn because they do badly in their exams. The whole point of learning is interaction, and that is what wikis are all about.

STYLE

Now for the wiki small print: there are certain stylistic and etiquette elements fundamental to wikis. The basics can be found here. A few adapted commandments of wiki:

1) Thou shalt not be antagonistic

2) Thou shalt collaborate in a helpful fashion

3) Thou shalt not tweak the HTML unless strictly necessary

4) Thou shalt not edit thine wiki after it hast been published

5) Thou shalt learn to disagree respectfully

6) Thou shalt not write drivel

So now you know just about what's necessary for you to go and start a wiki. What's great is that you can do it on anything - sausages, Stephen King novels, green energy - and somebody somewhere is almost guaranteed to find it useful, and when they do, hopefully they'll put some stuff on your wiki, and it will blossom and be a garden of knowledge in simplified HTML. See below for some links and go start a wiki - the 21st Century blank canvas.