The Wonderful Wiki

Wikis are an extremely useful tool with high potential and are constantly being viewed and updated by many users around the world. A wiki as described by Leuf in 'The Wiki Way' "...is a freely expandable collection of interlinked Web 'pages', a hypertext system for storing and modifying information - a database where each page is easily editable by any user with a forms-capable Web browser client" (Cunningham and Leuf, 2001). As wikis allow its users to freely create and update information one has to question how reliable this information actually is and who monitors what is being added and deleted?

A wikis success all depends on "...whether there's an active, diverse, and sufficiently intelligent community of users" (Bruns, 2008). At a glance there are three main issues that coincide with wikis: wrong information, vandalism and marketing entries.

In many universities, students are not allowed to use wikis as part of their research as the articles on the site are not of a scholarly nature. Although this is true there is good information out there of sites such as Wikipedia. Daniel Nations (2008) is a program specialist who believes wikis “…can be a great form of quick reference, but before you rely too much on an entry, it can be a good idea to verify the information.” Many contributors can post information both unintentionally and intentionally and one must be careful with the use of the information provided by wikis.

The wiki is inherently democratic and allows web collaboration without accounts or passwords. This all seems too easy however editing wikis in this fashion causes your IP address to be recorded publicly in the edit history. Creating an account conceals this information. This has created a way to stop vandalism on wiki web pages. "Anyone can play... Only good players have the desire to keep playing" (C2, 2003).

Wikis can also be used for displaying information on not only historical facts and figures but is also used as a marketing strategy for some artists/celebrities. Entries on stars or politics seem to be very biased and omit particular information. This is an issue when trying to gather as much information as you can, both good and bad.

Many of these issues deter people from using wikis as a source of information however that fact that anyone can change or shape an entry is the very thing which makes a wiki a wiki. Reliable information is an issue however even experts can be wrong. I don’t think we embrace wiki’s or use them to their fullest potential; instead we tend to focus on the negatives which I believe is a shame. Collective knowledge is definitely better than the opinion of one or two professionals.

References:



Bruns, A. 2008. Wonderful wikis?. http://snurb.info/node/797 (Accessed April 17, 2008).

C2. 2003. Why Wikis Work. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks (Accessed April 17, 2008).

Cunningham, W. and B. leuf. 2001. The Wiki Way: quick collaboration on the web. Boston: Addison – Wesley

Nations, D. 2008. The Downside of Wikis. http://webtrends.about.com/od/wiki/a/wiki_downside.htm (Accessed April 17, 2008).