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Writing with Wikis
January 19th, 2006
For nearly a month now I’ve been trying wikis with the co-moderators to-be for BAW 2006. I’ve tried my hand at pbwiki and not felt comfortable in that environment at all… 
Daf is definitely enthusiastic about them, but many of the others share my feelings. Here’s what I’m not happy about:
1) At wikis, everybody can do everything, without even informing the author of a text if they’ll have it deleted. Besides, people can make contributions and then readers will never distinguish who’s said what (unless they remember to “sign” their additions, or readers take the trouble to click on “Edit this page”). I find this confusing as a reader, and rather “threatening” as a writer.
2) What’s worse, there’s no easy way to keep track of changes made (again, unless you take the trouble to click on “Edit this page”). If I’ve posted something, I’d need to go back regularly to check nobody if somebody has made changes to it. I’d like a wiki to notify me by email every time a change is made (as Webcollaborator would do, pity it was unstable; BTW, it notified comments, but not changes to the documents either!)
3) I hate dealing with the formatting conventions, what is known as “Wiki syntax”. Yet, at Wikipedia, I can read: “Some recent wiki engines … allow ”WYSIWYG” editing, usually by means of JavaScript or an ActiveX control that translates graphically entered formatting instructions such as “bold” and “italics” into the corresponding HTML tags.” I’d definitely like to try that!
Ironic: while objecting to wikis, I’m making use of one as a source of knowledge!!! 
Guess that means I need to keep exploring this tool!
Gladys
Originally posted at my LiveJournal (now closed) on Dec 21, 2005
Computer-mediated writing | Comments (3)
3 Responses to “Writing with Wikis”
Hi Gladys,
I totally agree with your comments. The most confusing for me is the syntax.
Hope that people can learn to respect other’s ideas and share theirs in order not to destroy a wiki made!
Juliana Gense
Well Gladys, the other day someone asked me why I used and Elgg instead of a wiki and I said I was exploring all the options. But, I too have that uncomfortable feeling, I’ll keep trying to see what i can make of it.
Cheryl
The great thing about the range of Web 2.0 tools on offer, Gladys, is that we can pick and choose the ones that suit us and our learning & teaching environment. I must admit that until recently I didn’t see the usefulness of wikis, but I have recently become a convert, and have started using them with students, and also for me. If nothing else, you can use them with a small group for joint-editing of documents, which I like. You can also use a wiki as an easy way of developing a complex document, little-by-little, publishing online as you go.