Week 7, Thing 16

Wikis
I have been using wikis for various things over the years. I have even helped set some up in WetPaint. Generally they have been marginally useful.

They are also useful as the content that is in them. The ones that ALA and PLA have used for conferences are content rich and have been useful tools to use. I have never contributed to them, only used the information contained in them.

I have found the WikiNorthia project by Yarra Plenty Regional Library to be intriguing but it is also frustrating as it is missing so much.

The problem with wikis is that you need content and you need to get people contributing to them. I asked my husband if he used wikis at all with his students. He then told me he had set one up this semester for students to use in their logic class so they could work on answers and so on. And none of them were using it! This is meant to be the web 2.0 generation that is so connected to it all but they aren't using the tools provided.

The wiki we set up for Dangerous Ideas after our PLA presentation has been used a little bit to generate some discussions but not a lot. Again, it lacks a lot of content. And who is going to provide it?

I like and use wikipedia. I wouldn't use it as my only resource but as a wiki it works well. Other times I wonder. That said, i am wondering if a wiki would be more useful to TSRT to get members working together on projects. Overall, it seems that just because you set up a web 2.0 tool doesn't mean anyone is going to use it.