Reflections On Personal Experiences In Using Wikis

Exploiting The Potential Of Wikis: Reflections On Personal Experiences In Using Wikis Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath Email [email_address] UKOLN is supported by: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/wiki-workshop-2006/ Abstract A brief review of personal experiences in using Wikis and some reflections of implications for institutional provision of Wiki services. This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Resources bookmarked using 'ukoln-wiki-workshop-2006' tag

Contents

Making a start: Wikalong

Using Wikipedia

In-house use: Twiki and MediaWiki

Bundled Wikis: Moodle

Web 2.0 services: Writely, WetPaint, Jot, Pbwiki, …

Reflections

Using Wiki To Support Ourselves

Wikalong

Wiki used for workshop on " Beyond Email: Strategies for Collaborative Working and Learning in the 21st Century ", Nov 2004

Wikalong tool used:

Hosted service for annotating Web pages

Firefox/IE plugin

Also referrer service

Experiences

Easy to use

Data copied to UKOLN

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/ ucisa-wlf-2004-11/discussion-groups/discussion-wikis Eventually (year+ later) spambot add link spam to page (& try to make invisible)

Wikipedia

Also in Feb 2004 created Wikipedia entry on Rapper Sword, a personal interest (not morris dancing!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapper_sword Over time content grows, appearance improves (through community support – e.g. corrections to German grammar). Decision to give geographical & historical emphasis. No longer in complete control (new-fangled US rapper team first to have entry in Wikipedia)

In-House Wiki - Twiki

In 2005 Twiki software installed locally and used to support UKOLN's research interest (e.g. collaborative discussions on metadata elements by international metadata community).

Twiki then started to be used for other purposes. But:

Was it the right tool for other purposes

Would be get locked in

Training & support issues

…

From Twiki To MediaWiki

MediaWiki used to support (a) events and (b) JISC standards catalogue.

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/ community/index/IWMW2006 Wiki provision for events seems sensible: admin support; community building; clarification; etc. Wikis for collaborative document work seems sensible. Need to have shared agreement or mechanisms for handling tensions. Other issues: (A) Wiki as a process for stuff which is deployed elsewhere (e.g. writing papers) or Wiki as a delivery vehicle and (B) interoperability of Wikis; exporting data and application logic.

Experiences of In-House Wikis

Ideal solution not yet identified:

MediaWiki is liked by techies (MySQL, extensible, …) & is used in Wikipedia (scalable)

Patterns of usage not yet established (one Wiki or multiple instances)

Management of MediaWiki extensions may be a support issues

Transclusion (embed content from one Wiki to another) sound great – but technical issues (performance, recursion)

Usability issues: what does home mean?

How much training, support & development do we invest?

We have a need for an event which will help to resolve these issues!

Let's Try Some More!

Various externally hosted Wikis used to gain experiences of approaches

Pbwiki – note RSS links to pages (and versions of pages) http://iwmw-barriers.pbwiki.com/ http://alt-c-2006.wetpaint.com/ Wetpaint – attractive interface and also RSS links to pages (and versions of pages) Suprglu – RSS aggregator, which can bring together RSS feeds from disparate Wikis (and other tools) http://altc.suprglu.com/

Bundled Wikis - Moodle

Do you need dedicated Wiki software, if the functionality is provided in other enterprise software (VLEs, CMSs, etc.)

As part of ongoing evaluation of tools, approaches, etc., Wiki in Moodle used for planning a paper & arranging event.

Thoughts:

Poor interface

Poor quality HTML

…

Issues:

Evaluation of subjective aspects

Improvements in next versions

Replaced functionality (e.g. SOA)

Licensed Wiki At Event – Jot

Licensed Jot Wiki service used at ALT 2006 Research Seminar in Holland.

Used by participants in " Emerging technologies & the Net Generation " day's event.

http://altspring.jot.com/ Participants described interests in Wiki prior to events Reporters summarised discussion groups using Wiki – and reported back where sat (chair scrolled through notes) Notes in digital form made it easier to produce white paper

Web 2.0 Services: Writely

Writely used for planning paper. This provides:

Word-processing style interface

Authentication system

Multiple ways of saving file (publish to Blog; save locally in various formats)

RSS disclosure

At one stage (just after Google buy-out) email authentication didn't work (invalid sender field meant email was not sent). However message sent to Writely forum resulted in fix within 2 days

What Is A Wiki?

Is Writely a Wiki or a Web-based word processor?

Is Google Spreadsheets a Wiki: fill in values and see how the graph alters.

Thoughts:

Stop confusing things: it's like Wikipedia; it doesn't matter.

We need to properly scope our Wiki deployment exercise; otherwise the scientists who wish to collaborate build data structure will be unhappy with a text-based Wiki service.

Is Gliffy a Wiki or a Web-based collaborative drawing tool: add a location where you think Wikis are on Gartner hype curve. Is a personal Wiki a Wiki ( Wikipad on Palm)?

Third Party Services

Third party tool used on Web site to convert RSS to HTML

On 10 Oct, email received saying page was corrupt

Page fixed and problem investigated & documented

Company had failed to pay bill for domain (admin error)!

Bill was paid & domain quickly restored

Discussion:

Demonstration of why 3 rd party services must never be used

Minor irritation; process for fixing worked & improved processes for minimising future risks developed (& processes will improve with community involvement)

No innovation until central services get round to evaluation & deployment, or certain amount of risk acceptance. What’s the answer?

Reflections

Some thoughts:

Support : Net generation happy to pick up and use various tools vs Oversimplistic

Authorisation : Leave open vs simple authorisation vs need for single signon / Shibbolised services

Usage : What do we want to use Wikis for?

Take-up : What will users use Wikis for and hpw with they use them (if at all)?

Key features in selection : technical (open source, backend database, …) vs user features (interface, ease-of-use) vs institutional (enterprise software; backend integration; …)