Wikis are a neat collaboration tool. I've seen good ones, and bad ones. Largely, this isn't a measure of the technology itself (there are several different wiki implementations, but they all more or less function the same). The success or failure of a wiki purely depends on the people involved.
If you have people that are interested and dedicated to maintaining a particular wiki, that site will resist the general tend toward drivel which roams the 'net as surely as entropy stalks us in meatspace. If you have a neglected wiki, or a wiki in which the people do not cooperate in terms of organization/writing style/policy you end up with a chaos of random pages.
If you are going to run a library wiki on any topic and include public participation, I see one of two fates. Either it will suffer disuse - or administering it will become your entire job.
On the other hand, a closed membership Wiki for collaboration on a specific topic can be a very effective way of maintaining a knowledge base or discussion system. However, forum or blog software (anything with threading) tends to be superior when dealing with any sort of back and forth conversation. Having the ability to edit the past of a conversation is very disorienting, even if its possible to pull differing versions of the old page up.
The "hey, post something" attitude that is fine for forums and blog comments falls apart when it turns into "hey, read and understand our elaborate Wiki guidelines, please check quick to see if there is a more appropriate page, then post something and please have it fit within the tone and topic of the parent body as well as checking the Talk page for this particular topic to see if your change has already been discussed and rejected. Also, check back regularly to make sure nobody has deleted your contribution and replaced it with a Viagra ad".
Maintaining a good wiki is complicated greatly by the ease of editing.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Library 2.0
The loss of the library collection is a troubling thing.
Libraries traditionally collected information and made it available for free. They are more and more relying on for-profit companies in order to provide access to the information that they once stockpiled. I've seen microfilm collections, which were in the library's custody, give way to a subscription system, controlled by a vendor.
This loss of custody reduces an independent organization into a consumer before the whims of the vendor. As information gets older and begins to fall out of copyright - custody becomes de-facto ownership. The information may be public domain, but the owners of the copies of it have no obligation to provide it to the public other than under their own terms.
With the libraries not having copies of their own, that effectively pushes the ownership of our collective histories into the hands of the for-profit archivists.
I have a similar conspiracy theory about web.archive.org. In 75 years or so, whatever the copyright term is these days... they will own the only copy of... the entire Internet circa the year 2000.
Loss of the collection is also *trusting* that other people will decide to keep their version. When everybody trusts everyone else in this way you suddenly find yourself in a position where no copies of something exist any longer.
Libraries traditionally collected information and made it available for free. They are more and more relying on for-profit companies in order to provide access to the information that they once stockpiled. I've seen microfilm collections, which were in the library's custody, give way to a subscription system, controlled by a vendor.
This loss of custody reduces an independent organization into a consumer before the whims of the vendor. As information gets older and begins to fall out of copyright - custody becomes de-facto ownership. The information may be public domain, but the owners of the copies of it have no obligation to provide it to the public other than under their own terms.
With the libraries not having copies of their own, that effectively pushes the ownership of our collective histories into the hands of the for-profit archivists.
I have a similar conspiracy theory about web.archive.org. In 75 years or so, whatever the copyright term is these days... they will own the only copy of... the entire Internet circa the year 2000.
Loss of the collection is also *trusting* that other people will decide to keep their version. When everybody trusts everyone else in this way you suddenly find yourself in a position where no copies of something exist any longer.
14 - Technorati
Technorati! Its a search engine... for blogs!
Woo-woo.
I'm kind of surprised that this resurgence of 'tagging' is somewhat effective. It was tried before - look up "meta" tages in html for instance. The idea was that the creator of a page would specify some keywords and whatnot so that the search engines and so on would have an easier time digesting the site. They are still used, a little, in conjunction with the other site attributes. In the innocent days of the web they were trusted explicitly - this was a main method of making your website climb up search results for unrelated results. If, circa 1998, you ever had hardcore pornography creep to the top of the list while on a search for, say 'honda civic muffler', you were probably the victim of intentional meta tag spam.
This current tagging fad is basically the same thing. It doesn't tend to be so bad largely because the wide search engines of the world basically ignore them and the communities within which they are used tend to be somewhat moderated.
One thing that does make me chuckle about tagging in general is that it takes the library idea of a controlled vocabulary of topics and throws it completely out the window. The opposite is occuring - the individuals are tagging things however they they want, and they seem to be happy.
Woo-woo.
I'm kind of surprised that this resurgence of 'tagging' is somewhat effective. It was tried before - look up "meta" tages in html for instance. The idea was that the creator of a page would specify some keywords and whatnot so that the search engines and so on would have an easier time digesting the site. They are still used, a little, in conjunction with the other site attributes. In the innocent days of the web they were trusted explicitly - this was a main method of making your website climb up search results for unrelated results. If, circa 1998, you ever had hardcore pornography creep to the top of the list while on a search for, say 'honda civic muffler', you were probably the victim of intentional meta tag spam.
This current tagging fad is basically the same thing. It doesn't tend to be so bad largely because the wide search engines of the world basically ignore them and the communities within which they are used tend to be somewhat moderated.
One thing that does make me chuckle about tagging in general is that it takes the library idea of a controlled vocabulary of topics and throws it completely out the window. The opposite is occuring - the individuals are tagging things however they they want, and they seem to be happy.
Thing 13 - Delicious
Again, I have a creative disdain for anything social-networky.
Delicious strikes me as a little less creepy - not enough to become a regular user - but not so much that I want to reflexively hit the back button. Its quite likely because this is the sort of information gathering that I am used to - they are basically creating a microcosm of the "good stuff on the internet rises to the top when enough people link to it" formula that google and the other search engines use to draw order from chaos these days. It also is less intrusive during signup, so I feel more comfortably anonymous within its system.
Insofar as the 'keep your bookmarks organized' feature, I don't find it that useful. I used to have it setup so that my home/work computers both synced their builtin bookmarks against a person ftp server. (Something like... http://lifehacker.com/software/bookmarks/hack-attack-back-up-and-sync-your-firefox-bookmarks-with-your-personal-server-235519.php)... but not that exact setup. It fell into disuse - keeping bookmarks forever only left me with piles and piles of bookmark clutter - sites that I thought I would visit again at the time but never got back to, or forgot about... etc. Bookmarking for me just turns into clutter, I think its a personal usage issue. If I can't remember it - I need to write it down - anywhere but under the Bookmarks menu. Putting it on flickr just hides it behind yet another website to lose my login information for.
Also, for whatever reason, the 13 minute video didn't work, so I skipped it.
Delicious strikes me as a little less creepy - not enough to become a regular user - but not so much that I want to reflexively hit the back button. Its quite likely because this is the sort of information gathering that I am used to - they are basically creating a microcosm of the "good stuff on the internet rises to the top when enough people link to it" formula that google and the other search engines use to draw order from chaos these days. It also is less intrusive during signup, so I feel more comfortably anonymous within its system.
Insofar as the 'keep your bookmarks organized' feature, I don't find it that useful. I used to have it setup so that my home/work computers both synced their builtin bookmarks against a person ftp server. (Something like... http://lifehacker.com/software/bookmarks/hack-attack-back-up-and-sync-your-firefox-bookmarks-with-your-personal-server-235519.php)... but not that exact setup. It fell into disuse - keeping bookmarks forever only left me with piles and piles of bookmark clutter - sites that I thought I would visit again at the time but never got back to, or forgot about... etc. Bookmarking for me just turns into clutter, I think its a personal usage issue. If I can't remember it - I need to write it down - anywhere but under the Bookmarks menu. Putting it on flickr just hides it behind yet another website to lose my login information for.
Also, for whatever reason, the 13 minute video didn't work, so I skipped it.
12 - Rollyo
...
Search aggregation. Where do I begin. Ah yes, Webfeat. I'll slam Webfeat.
My opinion on this sort of thing is: if you know what you are looking for, look for it in the proper place. Searching unrelated, specfic sources of information for a single topic is a waste of time and resources. I believe effort would be better spent in educating people and presenting the information in such a way that they are able to identify what information exists within a particular resource, instead of blanket searching across all of them.
As far as Rollyo goes, if you know what site you are interested in, you don't need a Rollyo account. can add the words "site:whatever.com" into the query box on Google and only search the contents of site.
This is beginning to look a lot like the old pre-crash web bubble, except none of these sites are actually spending money on anything except bandwidth.
Search aggregation. Where do I begin. Ah yes, Webfeat. I'll slam Webfeat.
My opinion on this sort of thing is: if you know what you are looking for, look for it in the proper place. Searching unrelated, specfic sources of information for a single topic is a waste of time and resources. I believe effort would be better spent in educating people and presenting the information in such a way that they are able to identify what information exists within a particular resource, instead of blanket searching across all of them.
As far as Rollyo goes, if you know what site you are interested in, you don't need a Rollyo account. can add the words "site:whatever.com" into the query box on Google and only search the contents of site.
This is beginning to look a lot like the old pre-crash web bubble, except none of these sites are actually spending money on anything except bandwidth.
11 - Librarything
Argh. Another thing that I find more creepy than useful.
Here is my librarything calatalog link: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/elifu
I guess I'm just not suited for this whole internet thing. I have, no joke, gone back through Netflix and cleared out all the ratings and history so that the autosuggester would stop. I would have done the same for Amazon, but I shop there so infrequently that it doesn't freak me out as much.
I don't like large databases existing that detail my likes and dislikes. I will never return to librarything.
Here is my librarything calatalog link: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/elifu
I guess I'm just not suited for this whole internet thing. I have, no joke, gone back through Netflix and cleared out all the ratings and history so that the autosuggester would stop. I would have done the same for Amazon, but I shop there so infrequently that it doesn't freak me out as much.
I don't like large databases existing that detail my likes and dislikes. I will never return to librarything.
Meez - Thing 10.
Tried to make a meez. I dress up the silly little doll, then click 'export', and it says I haven't made one... then sends me back.
I have to say that I do not believe this is my sort of thing. Ever. These are really, really, incredibly lame.
I know now that the reason I've been subconsciously unable to progress along the 21 things was the dark spectre of Meez hulking in my subconscious, just out of reach in the mysterious and decadent future. I am relieved that I couldn't get the export to work, I don't think I could tolerate the horrible visage of my creation staring back at me from this very webpage.
I have to say that I do not believe this is my sort of thing. Ever. These are really, really, incredibly lame.
I know now that the reason I've been subconsciously unable to progress along the 21 things was the dark spectre of Meez hulking in my subconscious, just out of reach in the mysterious and decadent future. I am relieved that I couldn't get the export to work, I don't think I could tolerate the horrible visage of my creation staring back at me from this very webpage.
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