#17 Playing around with PBWiki

I added my blog to the favourite blogs part of the Learning 2.0 favourites wiki. I also added a post about my favourite book to that part of the wiki. It was good to actually practice using a wiki. Although it seemed pretty easy to use I must have done something wrong as the hyperlink to my blog still has the square brackets showing (but I noticed I wasn't the only one). It really did seem to be a case of type and click. The favourite books page did seem to demonstrate one of the potential downsides of wikis. It is a jumble of text. There is no consistent formatting for entries. I know we're just playing but I guess it demonstrates what could happen if you let everyone contribute with no moderation of the content (even if that is just tidying up formatting).

#16 So what's in a wiki?

Before this exercise the only wiki I had really used was wikipedia, and I've only consulted that occasionally. I stumbled across another wiki called wikihow the other day when looking for suggestions for removing a splinter from underneath my fingernail. It describes itself as a "a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual" and covers a diverse range of topics from how to open a door with a credit card to how to keep safe during a house fire. I like the idea of the collaborative nature of wikis and that they are designed to be easy for non IT experts to use. However, the fact that they may be open to unrestricted editing also makes me somewhat cautious of the content in some cases.

One thing I noticed about the wikis that I looked at for this activity was that they are not the prettiest web sites. It would be great if they could look a bit more exciting. Content wise I liked the SJCPL subject guide wiki. I like the mix of information with links to books within the library collection as well as a few select websites. I even added one of the knitting websites to my delicious bookmarks. I found this wiki user friendly and I think it is the sort of thing we could do as a public library that could actually be really useful (and easy to use) for library members.