About Wikis

I blame David Chess, who made a passing reference to the Wiki Pedia in his Log. I’ve looked at Wikis before, of course, and even posted about them, but the Wiki Pedia is the first time I really got to participate. The part that I find most fascinating about Wikis is the way the community aspect works. The fact that any one can edit it pretty much anything in most wikis is intriguing. And I can see how they have enormous use in development, for internal “knowledge management,” or sharing and accreting tribal knowledge. But I’d like to try using them for teaching too (there’s a lot of potential for using a wiki for student writing projects), and for managing my own data. I’m very keen to try a wiki in terms of my own dissertation research, both for the dissertation proper, and as a way of keeping track of the extraneous and tangential branching that my research often leads to. I really want something set up locally on my Mac’s hard drive, or possibly on my ISP/site host’s server, but in the meantime I’ve been playing around with Seed Wiki. You can see what I’ve done so far (not much) here.