What is a Wiki?
Wikis perform a very useful service in a simple way. A wiki allows a group of people to enter and communally edit bits of text. These bits of text can be viewed and edited by anyone who visits the wiki.
This simplicity and the utter openness of a wiki cause many people to instantly reject the idea. They assume that because anyone can edit a wiki at any time, the wiki must be flawed. But wiki supporters claim this is an incorrect assumption.
A wiki is nothing but a collection of Web pages interconnected with each other through internal links.
This simplicity and the utter openness of a wiki cause many people to instantly reject the idea. They assume that because anyone can edit a wiki at any time, the wiki must be flawed. But wiki supporters claim this is an incorrect assumption.
A wiki is nothing but a collection of Web pages interconnected with each other through internal links.
Introduction to How Wikis Work
The most famous example of a wiki is called "Wikipedia", a massive online encyclopedia. Wikipedia has become so large (more than a million articles) that you run across it all the time in the search engine "Google".
The Creation of Wikipedia Pages
At the top of the page in Wikipedia, you see a tab that says, "Edit this page." That is a wide-open invitation to anyone – any visitor to Wikipedia (including you) can edit any page.
The idea that anyone can come to Wikipedia and edit any page at any time and do so with complete anonymity is extremely disconcerting.
Obvious questions arise immediately:
The idea that anyone can come to Wikipedia and edit any page at any time and do so with complete anonymity is extremely disconcerting.
Obvious questions arise immediately:
*What if the person doing the typing has no idea what he/she is talking about?
*What if the person is a vandal and inserts profanity?
*What if the person is a vandal and either completely erases the page or corrupts it?
*What if the person is a spammer from a porn site who adds porn links and pictures to the page?
>The key thing that makes a wiki work is its community.<
Understanding a Wiki Community
Each person who arrives is able to play one or more roles on the site. For example:
*The large majority of people who visit Wikipedia are readers. They arrive at Wikipedia for whatever reason and read one or more articles.
*Some people who visit Wikipedia become writers. They add a new section to an existing article or create a brand new article.
*Many people act as editors. If they see an error on a page they are reading, they correct it. If they can make a small addition that is helpful, they will do it on the spot.
*Several hundred visitors who have been contributing to Wikipedia for a period of time are granted administrator privileges. These privileges give them the right to do things like deleting and un-deleting pages, blocking and unblocking IP addresses, etc.
Writers, editors, and administrator’s work together to solve almost all of the problems that you would expect to arise in an open platform like Wikipedia.
Experiment: Changing a Page
The number one best way to understand how a wiki community works is to "Test it out Yourself" and go to a place like Wikipedia and add something. The Wikipedia community will react to your change in some way. Your change could be accepted, altered, or rejected by the community. This is how pages on Wikipedia are expanding and changing all the time.
Community Tools
Wikipedia has a more personal tool called a Watchlist. By adding that page to your watchlist, you will get notified every time the page changes.
*Each page in Wikipedia has a Revision History that anyone can see.
*A list of all changed pages is also compiled on a Recent Changes page. Anyone can go to this page at any time to see all of the pages that are changing in Wikipedia.
Vandalism and Edit Wars
It is easy for a person to vandalize Wikipedia. However, there are tools that make it easy for the community to find and remove vandalism. For example:
*It is easy for anyone who sees vandalism to revert pages back to a pre-vandalism state.
*It is easy for any user to alert the rest of the Wikipedia community to vandalism that is in progress.
*It is possible for an administrator to block or ban users (or IP addresses) who are persistently destructive.
*It is possible for an administrator to protect a page temporarily to keep people from changing it.
*It is possible for an administrator to delete an inappropriate page.
A subtler, less intentional form of vandalism, called an "edit war," can also occur on a wiki. In an edit war, two or more people edit or revert pages over and over again in order to express their point of view.
Edit wars can happen on any wiki, but on a large wiki like Wikipedia, they can reach epic proportions. The best way to understand an edit war is to look at a battleground page and use it as an example – Wikipedia's page about George W. Bush, for example.
It is easy to understand why the George W. Bush page might be a battleground. There are many people who love George W. Bush, and there are many people who despise him. Edit wars like this are completely natural and to be expected.
Both parties have to reach consensus on the page, and that eventually causes the page to achieve a neutrality and objectivity that satisfies both parties.
Edit wars can happen on any wiki, but on a large wiki like Wikipedia, they can reach epic proportions. The best way to understand an edit war is to look at a battleground page and use it as an example – Wikipedia's page about George W. Bush, for example.
It is easy to understand why the George W. Bush page might be a battleground. There are many people who love George W. Bush, and there are many people who despise him. Edit wars like this are completely natural and to be expected.
Both parties have to reach consensus on the page, and that eventually causes the page to achieve a neutrality and objectivity that satisfies both parties.
Many Topics, Many Wikis
There are thousands of other wikis on the Internet now. As a genre, wiki sites are growing rapidly. Here are several examples:
*WikiTravel
*WikiHow
*Wiktionary
*SwitchWiki - a large directory of wikis
Virtually any topic with any sort of active community can, in theory, support a wiki. A wiki gives the community a way to gather information together and modify it as things change.
It is now common to see wikis used inside corporations and organizations. It is quite likely that wikis and other community-based efforts will grow rapidly as people become familiar and more comfortable with the concept.
*WikiTravel
*WikiHow
*Wiktionary
*SwitchWiki - a large directory of wikis
Virtually any topic with any sort of active community can, in theory, support a wiki. A wiki gives the community a way to gather information together and modify it as things change.
It is now common to see wikis used inside corporations and organizations. It is quite likely that wikis and other community-based efforts will grow rapidly as people become familiar and more comfortable with the concept.
Wikis in the Classrooms
"Using Wikipedia would be a helpful search tool in the classroom. Teachers could use this resource to create virtual field trips, storyboards, etc. Students could use this sight to do research on the web (with the correct controls of websites). I feel that Wiki could play an important but also a safe role for the classroom," explains Miller.
"I definitely think that Wiki is a very good tool to have in a classroom. It is a good tool to use for research. You could also let older children actually publish on Wiki. I feel that is a tool you can teach young children how to use and then they can carry it on with them as they get older," states Newpher.
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16 comments:
I liked the colors ur group used for this article. I also enjoyed the very detailed picture in the beginning of your article. I thought the set up of the different bulletins made it very easy to read and understand. Before reading your article I did not know how exactly wikis work. I also enjoyed reading about how they are used the classroom.
I love how you used headings and bullets to break up information! I learned a lot from your page but I especially found interesting the facts on wiki wars. I am going to look up wiki pages on George W. Bush to look into it further!
I really like how you split each paragraph up and used headings to explain each paragraph. I learned a lot about Wiki's and I liked the wiki wars those were interesting!
You all had a lot of information on wikis, which is a good thing so that everyone knows what a wiki actually is. I also really liked how you singled out the word wiki by putting it as a different color than the rest of the words. I too along with everyone else liked how you put the bullets to separate the paragraphs. Good information!!
I loved how the word 'wiki' was in a different color than the rest of the text. That made it stand out, but also draw my attention to read the entire thing, not just skim over it. :)
I also enjoyed the information on wiki wars, that was very interesting.
Your blog was easy to follow and read. I like how you broke it up into sections. The way you set up your blog made it easy to understand about wikis and was an easy way for someone who was looking for a particular piece of information to be able to find it. You had a lot of good information about wikis!
I happened to be the leader for my group this week and I found something in your post that I do not believe our article covered. I didn't know that in some wikis you can use a personal tool called a Watchlist, which will notify you every time the page changes. I think this is a great feature to have so we can try and keep the wikis from getting messed with. Good job with breaking up the article, and lots of useful information!
Great article. You explained a wiki very well. I liked how you mentioned that people reject the idea but explained how they can be used and edited. I also liked you information about wiki wars. Very interesting. The colors and layout were great. Easy to follow article with lots of great information.
I agree with you in your blog how Wiki is effective in the learning process. Wikipedia is a well known tool on the internet for looking up information. I myself use Wikipedia in my research for school, and for personal use. I speak from experience when I say that I think it is a great and easy tool to use.
Out of all the blogs, I think I learned the most from this one. It was very informative with new information. I learned about edit wars and vandalism because I was still skeptical about wikis being edited by anyone. I also liked how your article suggested to edit a wiki. I think I will do that because that would be very interesting. Good job on using and putting information together!
this gave you every ounce of information that you needed to know what a wiki is, where you can find them, how you can us it in the classroom, etc.
Group Two, your posting was to the point and not overwhelming with information which made it easy to follow and read. the use of color and the setup of your page made it eye catching and interesting. the informaiton provided was very good.
I liked how your group explained how to use a wiki and gave us step by step lessons on how exactly it works. I think its importanat that people really do understand how the whole process works and you gave a detailed description. Good work team two.
I loved the set up of your page..I think you are right and people need to understand that when they use a WIKI that there is a chance that not all of the information will be completely acurate. It it such a good opperetunity for students though!! Great Job!
Very nice work. I, like everyone else, enjoyed th word "wiki" being in a different color. It reminds me of wikipedia. You made it very clear as to what wiki is and even where to find it and how to use it. Great work.
Wow, this blog was nicely organized. I loved the subcaptions which made it flow smoothly. I especially liked the part about the Wiki community. It explained who the users are and how they use Wiki.
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