What’s a Wiki?

What’s a Wiki?

Hawaiian for “quick” or “informal” A webpage with content created by and

edited by multiple users, with immediate results visible to all

The software used to create such a webpage

Source: http://wikipedia.org/wiki

Interesting Facts

The oldest known wiki is the WikiWikiWeb, created by Ward Cunningham in 1995: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors

Wikipedia saw a 154% traffic increase last year (Hitwise)

Wikipedia was recently cited as the #1 reference source on the web (HitWise)

Has spawned a parody site, the Uncyclopedia, filled with misinformation and utter lies: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/

How Are Wikis Used? Collections of articles or documents Themed booklists Collections of shared materials (Ellison

dies, equipment, etc FAQs on a topic Collaborative student projects (i.e.,

poems, fanfic, art, book reviews...) Editing policies or other documents Scholarly communication Other???

Advantages Anyone can edit No HTML required Changes are immediate Pages and links are instant & automatic No one knows everything, but everyone

knows something Many hands make light work Edits are easy to view and track Use Web Standards

http://www.webstandards.org/learn/faq/

Other???

Disadvantages Anyone can edit Misinformation may not get fixed

immediately Unfamiliar style (no HTML) Mostly text, few bells & whistles Authority of authors questionable Fictional entries Citation can be challenging Other???

Why Do Wikis Work? Everyone owns it, so everyone is

responsible and feels a sense of ownership

Small groups of volunteers are very dedicated

The cream rises to the top Wikis generate a culture of knowledge and respect Discourse is courteous Other???

When Do Wikis Fail? Spam, though discouraged and deleted,

still rears it’s ugly head Disagreements occur Entries and threads get off topic Fictional subjects are taken as truth If you feel a sense of personal

ownership over your writing, wikis are not for you!

Pages not maintained may disappear Other???

Examples of Wikis

Wikipedia Free online encyclopedia with over 2

million articles in English on a variety of topics

350,000 contributors 25 languages 2 million entries Five times more popular than Google

News, Yahoo News or BBC (Hitwise) Nearly as accurate as Encyclopedia

Britannica http://www.wikipedia.org

WikiNews A wikipedia spin-off that allows anyone

to become a journalist http://en.wikinews.org/wiki

Free textbooks and book-based texts, (similar to Cliff’s Notes), subdivided into books for youth and academic titles and projects

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks

WikiBooks

Examples of Library Wikis

LIS Wiki The Library and Information Science

wiki that anyone can edit, with over 200 articles on topics ranging from advocacy to virtual reference

http://liswiki.org/wiki/

Resource of best practices for libraries; articles on collection development, reference, technology, and programming

http://www.libsuccess.org

Library Success

YALSA Wiki

Advocacy, Committee Work, TRW/TTW planning

http://wikis.ala.org/yalsa/index.php/Main_Page

For use with blogs and photoshttp://teacherlibrarianwiki.pbwiki.com/

Joyce Valenza’s Teacher Librarian Wiki

EDCO Wiki! Web 2.0 resources http://edcolibrary.wikispaces.com

–Waltham High School Wiki about wikis by Kendall Boninti

– http://walthamhigh.wikispaces.com/

WHS Wiki

CT Nutmeg Wiki Student selected (like the MA Children's

Book Award from Salem State). Great model for online book discussion for students.

http://nutmeg.wikispaces.com/

–Resources about bibliotherapy. Only a few booklists! Contribute!

– http://bibliotherapy.wikispaces.com/

Bibliotherapy Wiki

ALA TechSource GLLS2007 Used to promote the event, and then

presentations (audio, video, ppt, handouts) were archived here. Excellent resource for Gaming in Libraries!

http://gaming.techsource.ala.org/index.php/Main_Page

–Resources about bibliotherapy. Only a few booklists! Contribute!

– http://www.wowwiki.com/Main_Page

WoWWiki

Resources

Web Resources

Wiki Matrix, for comparison of wikis http://www.wikimatrix.org/

Wiki Design Principles, a list of concepts by creator Ward Cunningham

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki/WikiDesignPrinciples

Print Resources

Cunningham, Ward and Bo Leuf. The Wiki Way: Collaborating and Sharing the Internet. (Addison-Wesley, 2001)

Ebersbach, Anja et al. Wiki: Web Collaboration. (Springer, 2005)

Wiki Glossary

Wiki Farm – website that hosts wikis, so you don’t have to download, install or host anything on your own server, or worry about the programming end of creating a wiki.

Wiki Gnome – anonymous poster who bats cleanup, tirelessly making minor edits.

Wiki Squatting – using a wiki as free personal webspace

Wiki Glossary, cont. Wiki Tags – elements that add

formatting, such as bold, italics, etc Wikipedian – avid contributor to

Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, created and maintained by its users.

Sandbox – wiki page for testing and playing

Orphan page – abandoned page, often with no links

 Walled Garden – a series of Wiki pages that link only to one another

MA Summer Reading Wiki

Artwork, Booklists, Resources for the MA SRP

http://masummerreading.pbwiki.com

Basic Wiki Tags * = bullet ! = headline ** = bold '' = italic | = box NewPage = new page (two or more

words strung together with no spaces and capital first letters creates a new page and a link to that page

[url|link] to create a web hyperlink