Gina Marmolejo EPSS Proposal Wikis- What is a wiki? How can they be used? Who can benefit from using such a cool collaborative tool? What are the consequences in working with others on a project when it’s a collaborative effort? Can someone sabotage a wiki and ruin everything? As an organizer of a wiki are you allowed to delete what you want of don’t want on a wiki? How can this tool be useful to others? I started my interest in wikis in one of my first courses at UM and I have been very diligent in learning the benefits and possibilities of using this tool. I have started several wikis and feel the website I use to host my wikis could use a well designed EPSS. The website is Wikispaces and there can be many benefits in using this host site, but it’s hard to find “help” when you’re wanting to contribute information or add to the wiki. This website has information to start a wiki with introductory video clips that are basic and simplified. There’s a discussion board you can search through to find the answer for your question, but expect to spend a lot of time weeding through bogus answers and strange comments from other users. The main complaint I have is if someone wants to add information to a wiki they usually click “Edit this Page” and then freeze. There are really no guidelines as to how to add the information and there’s not a way of getting help without having to leave the wiki you are trying to edit. By chance the user may click on the Wikispace logo to begin a search for an answer and here is where the trouble starts. The user may come across this: How to start a wiki…
Gina Marmolejo EPSS Proposal The video clips are very basic and may get the user interested in using the site, but their question as to how to add information to a wiki is not included only how to get started information. Then they may come across this massive discussion board they need to allow time for bogus answers from others and attempt to search for their answer.
Here’s where you can ask a question and possibly get some answers. There’s a whole lot of discussing going on.
If there were a better navigation tool within the individual wiki that would allow for a basic informational search, troubleshooting and questions that may be come up more people would be apt to use the website. I see a lot of wikis that are started and then just abandoned. I think people get frustrated with trying to figure out the websites features. Most of the wikis I have started have been more like blogs because I feel others may be intimidated with the use of this collaborating tool. Here are a couple of my wikis that have very few contributions (other than me). I would like to make this tool easier to use and more inviting to others. http://mcwhorterblog.wikispaces.com and http://hotlists.wikispaces.com