February 20, 2004
Wikis Weally Wock.
Well, they do. OK, so they have confusing and inconsistent markup languages, and often encourage CrushingWordsTogether, but the advantages of having something on a webpage, editable by anyone capable of operating a web browser, outweigh (IMHO) these problems.
For instance, Huggie has a wiki, running the MoinMoin wiki software, which I've used a bit and seen other people using to organise stuff — it's very useful for a simple, impromptu online signup system for an event, say.
They don't have to be all open access and public, either. There's a Wonky Wiki, most of which is intended solely for people with accounts on a shared colo machine (the one hosting this blog). We use it to keep some vague semblance of documentation for the system, so people know what's going on when confronted with the mess someone else has made of a config file, say. Some of the pages are world-viewable, too, and it makes a quite simple way to stick some information on the web with a minimum of hassle. Great.
I've somehow got this far without mentioning OpenGuides, though I'm not quite sure how. It's a piece of wiki software, intended for running an online guide to a city, written by its readers. It includes nifty features like listing all the reviewed locations within a given distance of a given location, automatically generating links to Streetmap maps, and generally being ace. The London and Oxford guides are especially successful examples, and there is a (still) nascent Nottingham Guide available. There are more like them, but these are the ones I've used. (Weelll, OK, maybe my interest in NottinghamGuide runs to a little more than having used it).
There are, of course, defacement problems — the human race may be generally decent, but there are still morons out there who are out to ruin things for everyone. Generally, though, the genuine contributors outnumber the morons, and defacements can be undone quickly and easily. Most wikis offer a means to roll an entry back to any state it has previously been in, which can be great for dealing with this sort of thing. Other people have more to say on the subject of wiki "security" than I do, though, so I'll leave that alone for now.
In other news, I've apparently been too busy to write much here... I've had a few great weekends, and meant to write something about them, then never really got round to it. I've got just about all my marks for the first semester at uni, and it looks like I've done pretty well (or got a First, anyway), so I'm quite chuffed about that.
I've been reading more, too. I particularly liked Cory Doctorow's first novel, which as an added bonus is free to download, from his website, along with his second, and some short stories.
Wow, that was almost like content. Time for a lie down, I think.
[Update: this entry is getting hammered by comment spammers, so I'm going to close comments on it. If you have something to say, comment on another entry, or mail me; if people do, I might even reopen comments on this]
Posted by James at 00:49
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Comments
The big problem with wikis, imo, are the people who want to use wikis for everything. "Want a blog? Use a wiki! How about a guestbook? Use a wiki for that too! Don't have access to usenet? Who cares when you can just replicate it with a wiki? Need a map of Timbuktu? A wiki will cure what ails you!" It's like the incredibly annoying and pretentious "blogs will solve all the world's problems" brigade all over again. And I'll stop ranting now.
Posted by: rho at February 20, 2004 12:12 PM
Of course. People like that (unrational advocates) get everywhere, though; they're not an affliction unique to wikis, just as they weren't an affliction unique to blogs.
It's fairly clear that, as you point out, wikis aren't the ideal solution for everything. Netnews or maybe mailing lists are still a far better discussion medium, in many ways. Proper blogging systems are still going to make better content management systems. The list could go on. The thing about wikis isn't that they're better at any of these things, per se — it's that they're easier. I don't see how, for instance, the Nottingham Guide could be done better as not-wiki — somehow, somewhere, there would be more hassle for someone involved, and where's the fun in that?
I'd like to think I'm more moderate in my advocacy than the people you describe, anyway :-)
Posted by: James at February 20, 2004 12:38 PM
Oh, yes. You're definitely much more rational than that. And wikis really are great. I've just come across some rabid wiki loonies recently, so I felt compelled to rant about them :)
Posted by: rho at February 20, 2004 12:50 PM