WikiDiscussion

1. Wikis as public spaces
1. Wikis and Multiculturalism
2. Wikis as Creative Software
1. Visual
2. Informational
3. Narrative
3. Wikis as Political Software
4. Wikis as Social Software
1. Wikis as Social Change Software
2. Wikis as Social Responsibility Software
2. Wiki as Tool
3. MoinMoin and This Wiki
1. Multiple Personal Wikis
2. OPML
4. Wiki Editorial Style
5. Thoughts about Wikis versus Blogs and WikiLogs
6. Do Wikis Lead to GroupThink?
7. Are Wikis Ugly?

Wikis as public spaces

So, wikis are more like public spaces than blogs. Should I reduce my "ego" on this page? I would like to make it easy for people to put stuff here. Having said that, I am the custodian so it should be clear that I have some editorial control / responsibility. - JoiIto

FWIW, I've had a personal wiki for a couple of years and have also struggled to find the same balance. I think the most important thing is to remember that nosey wikiphiles (that's me ;-)) will just arrive unnannounced and put stuff in the middle of your pages. Make the place as much yours as you want, people that understand wikis will know what to do. -- AdamShand

Hi Adam! Actually, I had just visited your Wiki and it was inspirational on the "ego" issue. What a coincidence! Nice to meet you. -- JoiIto

I'm curious what impression my site made on you, I don't often get the chace to have a fresh point of view. The biggest concern I've had has been when to refactor other peoples comments. For example you probably don't want or need this conversation on your front page indefinately ... but what do you do with it once the conversation is over? -- Adam

I liked the look. It made me want to dig into MoinMoin and try to figure out more of the features. I already have a blog so I'm interested in how Wiki's and blogs can be integrated. Blog entries spawning Wiki pages seems logical. So does having Wiki Pages for the various blog categories. I guess one problem is keeping comments consolidated. As you say, I guess we need to archive these discussions somewhere. Blogs seem better at dealing with discussions and archives for such linear things... -- JoiIto

Yep, blogs are definitely better at linear conversations, but the persistant knowledgebase that wiki's offer is more important to me. I'm hoping that adding TrackBacks and links backs to MoinMoin won't be too hard which will help wiki's participate in blogspace. Anyway, welcome to wiki, good luck! -- Adam.

In the end the true personality of the writer comes out, and it's a difficult thing for a person to mask their true ego. Taking a cue from the Cluetrain Manifesto, I think its more important for a person on the web to be honest and express themselves, than to worry about how they are perceived. -- Mayhem

Are you sure you want to see my TRUE personality? But I guess you're right. I guess it will just happen anyway. I am just wondering whether the "your living room is a public place" thing will happen on a Wiki. Someone recently thought my bathroom was a canvas. -- JoiIto
Hi, nice Wiki Wiki -=- "The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm." - Aldous Huxley -=- Tao
I think most wikis don't seem linear/chrono because the FrontPage isn't the RecentChanges page. And, of course, there's no body content for the entries, but that can be hacked as well. --BillSeitz

Wikis and Multiculturalism

Speaking of SocialSoftwareMapping and this multicultural world of ends in which we live, AitorGarcia comments on LaBlogosferaHispana.

Wikis as Creative Software

Opensourcenovel.net hosts a science fiction "novel on a wiki". Readers are invited to improve the text, potentially turning the whole world into a fiction workshop. -- RickHeller

In "Reading on The Web" DarciPattison suggests three design patterns: Visual, Informational and Narrative, and notes that the three often are intermixed.

In all the information on the growing number of wiki pages what has become somewhat lost is the story, "Joi Tries To Wiki".

Visual

FotoWiki

Informational

Wiki as Collaborative Hypermedium

When to use a wiki and when to use:

• Other Collaborative Hypermedia?

• Other Hypermedia?

• Other Media?

In order to be a serious wiki do contributors need to pay attention to Hypertext Patterns?

BORING
I heard that!

The larger context of HyperMedia

See also InformationArchitects

Narrative

Can wikis be used to tell a story?

We know that multiple authors can create HypertextFiction; who has used or is using a wiki for that purpose?

stories across blogs

pretty pictures

"novel on a wiki"

Wikis as Political Software

Disinfopedia

MinimalCompact

EmergentDemocracyPaper

Internet Constituency Is it 2004 already?

Wikis as Social Software

"Interestingly enough, at the Emerging Tech Conference, wikiblogging was clearly a hot topic." For example, the Social Software Alliance BoF (Birds Of a Feather) session, probably the most intense two hours of the conference, turned itself into a big wiki BTW, thanks for digging GlobeAlive. =)-- Allen

Wikis as Social Change Software

• Information Commons

• PlaNetwork

• Blogging about the PlaNetwork conference in San Francisco

Wikis as Social Responsibility Software

• Civil Practices Network

• Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

• Open Ideas Project

Wiki as Tool

Examples

• ChandlerCommunityWiki helping to develop a PIM called Chandler. The WikiEngine that they use is Perl-based TWiki.

• MoinMoinWikis

• NYT Article about business wikis. Somebody is making some money! (See also SocialText)

• PhpWikiSites

• "Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars" Definitive article. List is at the end.

• TWiki Success Stories and Testimonials (including Disney, SAP, Motorola, etc.) Peter Thoeny has done a nice presentation about Twiki and wikis in general.

• Zwikis

• Others?

I wonder if soon we will see somewhere between A and Z a wiki + IDE?

• A is for ApacheWiki

• Z is for ZopeWikis

Doncha just hate it when you have a cool idea and it already has been done?

• E is for EclipseWikiEditorPlugin or EmacsWikiMode

Not a wiki + IDE, not even wiki + MT yet... More like the Apache Wiki model.

• M is for MovableTypeWiki

MoinMoin and This Wiki

I wonder if MoinMoin allows and, if then, this wiki will get, a ReverseIndex?

Multiple Personal Wikis

So, I've really started having fun with the Wiki on my PowerBook, but find I don't make it over to this public Wiki as much. I have now set up rsync so that I always have a copy of this public Wiki on my own machine. Now I can edit it locally and just sync the files. This seems fun. There is more and more stuff running locally on my machine now and it helps the long train/plane rides. -- JoiIto

I thought the -u update only flag on rsync would do what I wanted, but I guess not. If you change the same Wiki page on both sites and copy the newer one over the older one, the older one is gone. Have to find a better solution than rsync for this I think. -- JoiIto

This is a hard problem. You might look how CVS solves concurrent edits. -- Zbigniew Lukasiak

OPML

I wish there were a way to import OPML directly into MoinMoin. I just added it to the MoinMoinIdeas page. - JoiIto

Use the XSLT extension and an opml2html stylesheet. -- from MoinMoin
So, I guess I better figure out how to do XSLT -- JoiIto
I know someone working on a PythonTk-based outliner which he says can edit ZWiki pages. I'll pass your name along to him. --BillSeitz

So has anyone done this yet? It would be really nice to have my OPML file automatically generate my blogroll. -- AdamShand

Wiki Editorial Style

A pity that the "optional comment about this change" must be so short as to be nearly meaningless. -- AlexSchroeder

Yikes! Watch out for The Grammar Police! I wonder if they take "kickbacks"?

Thoughts about Wikis versus Blogs and WikiLogs

See:

• AboutBlogs

• AboutWikisVsBlogs

Do Wikis Lead to GroupThink?

Do wikis lead to GroupThink?

I think an argument could be made that they do. So, if yes, do they lead more or less to groupthink than:

• weblogs?

• ConnnectionBuildingNetworks?

DavidWeinberger responds to:

"RebeccaBlood, in her keynote (pdf) at BlogTalk, worried that bloggers only read bloggers who agree with them, thus greatly limiting the potential for growth and understanding. Worse, only reading people who think the way we do can result in an "echo chamber" where the echoes seem to confirm our beliefs."

MarkFederman in his blog "What It The Message?" notes:

"Blogs that come to be noticed are those which are cited, that is linked-to, interestingly mirroring the best academic tradition. This is the highest form of editorial oversight - peer review. Those bloggers who establish a reputation for themselves by virtue of their insight, wittiness and general wisdom gain attention, which, after all, is the most valuable commodity in a world of instantaneous communications."

If this is the case, then wikis take it a step further since participants abilities exceed commentary. Of course, Mark is "raising the bar", not only does this wiki offer SplatterSpace, but it also now has to be:

• Insightful

• Witty

• Generally Wise

In "After Usability: Web Rhetoric, Captology and Persuasive Tech" PhilWolff has a somewhat different take related to this issues. He refers to it as ComputersAsPersuasiveTechnology.

Are Wikis Ugly?

PlasticBag

example

Another interesting read is Ross Mayfield's article "Wikis Are Beautiful". He wrote it to contradict LizLawley's assertion that "Wikis Are Ugly". (This almost completes a circle because Ross quotes Joi on the difference between looking and reading. And, some of the comments following Joi's blog entry are quite relevant to this discussion, as well as being relevant to a discussion AboutWikisVsBlogs blogs.) MarkDilley briefly made a similiar statement earlier: "Wikis are beautiful because the allow easy linking to other wikis. Content on a wiki is the most important piece."

Now there is Brent's Law of Wikis, which states:

The set of people who use wikis and the set of people who know how to make websites look good are mutually exclusive.

Roadmap for future wikis 10 Sep 03 also discusses the problem that the designers with design skills don't have the programming skills to hack wiki software. But this is based on a erroneous assumption. Many wiki software tools now support XHTML/CSS see the bottom of this page for a growing list of such tools: WikisAreUgly at Community Wiki

Why I Don't Like Wikis Email

GUI

What is a more important in Clay's comments, and Liz' earlier comments, is a critique on wiki ease-of-use. Such criticism strikes at the heart of the WikiWay. A wiki entry needs to be quick and simple, so that the focus remains on collaboration and content.

With the rapid proliferation of WikiEngines has come experimentation on how to achieve said simplicity. Thus, there now seem to be a dozen different ways to bullet items, create a link, etc. As DavidMattison has stated "The lack of a consistent, cross-wiki standard for text formatting is a distinct and severe disadvantage, especially if you visit and contribute to different wikis."

---

DanahBoyd in a blog entry "Defending Wikis" asks (abstracted and paraphrased):

• What is gained and lost by the intermittence of wikis

• What is gained and lost by the text orientation of wikis?

• Can wikis discourage malicious intent?

• How do wikis support the involvement of unknown colleagues?