1. Social Software: Wikis
May 19, 2004
Social Software: Wikis
Darlene Fichter, Data Library Coordinator, U of S Library
November 28, 2005

2. Darlene Fichter

3. Collaboration Happens at Different Levels
Community level
Relatively intense interactions
Rheingold - “enough people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace."
Network level
Interaction based around a topic or subject
Team level
Based around a project, task, process

4. U of S Weblog Initiative
I worked with the campus IT project team on:
Software selection
Policy
Promotion
Training
Stage: “soft rollout”
UThink – University of Minnesota (library led institution wide)
blog.lib.umn.edu
Embedded “blog this” in the licensed database results like links to citation manager

5. The University of Warwick: Statistics

6. Aggregate Tags for Your Community
University of Warwick Launch fall 2004
Blogs
3,622
Posts
47,872
Comments
110,784
Tags
4,654

7. Small Team Blog – Data Library
Software: Movable Type

8. Wiki
WikiWikiWeb

9. What is a “Wiki”?
Web application invented by Ward Cunningham in 1994 that allows anyone to add content and anyone to edit it.
“It’s a tool for collaboration, really, we don’t know quite what it is but it’s a fun way of communicating asynchronously across the network”.
Wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian

10. Wiki’s Characteristics
Intended to be simple so you can focus on the writing, not the mechanics and syntax
No HTML required

11. Wikis: Collections of Pages
Home Page
Contact Us
Products
RFPs
edit
edit
edit
edit
Wiki pages look like web pages
Anyone with a web browser can read a wiki site
Illustrations adapted from Guillaume du Gardier. What is a wiki? June 2, 2005

12. Click, Write and Save Anyone with a web browser can edit a wiki site
...KMWorld 2005
…KMWorld 2005
edit
edit
save
Anyone can undo any change at any time

13. Creating New Pages
Create a new page by writing its name in CamelCase, called a WikiName
Title
NewName
… NewName …
edit
edit
Click on any WikiName to see pages that link to it

14. Wiki Design Principles
Openness and trust
if a page is incomplete or inaccurate anyone can edit it
Incremental
pages can cite other pages, even those not yet written
Observable
you can see the changes being made
Organic
site structure is up to everyone and it will evolve and change
More principles…
Wiki Design Principles

15. Wiki (Jotspot) Anatomy: Features
Search
Attach a File
Changes via RSS
Invite users
Import Word s
Make a comment
Send an

16. Wiki Examples: Wikipedia

17. Wikipedia: Recent Changes

18. Wikipedia in Action London bombing, time lapse for Wikipedia changes
Emergent Information
The Day Citizen Media Went Mainstream, July 11,

19. Wikipedia: Viewing History

20. Wiki Gardeners
Person who goes around tidying up the wiki, pruning, editing, organizing, and cleaning up
Usually liked and respected
On a wiki, you might want to assign this role.

21. Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki

22. Ohio University Biz Wiki

23. University of Connecticut Staff Wiki

24. Butler WikiRef

25. Other Social Software Examples
Social Bookmark Tools
Furl -
Connotea - (aimed at academic, software is open source and you can install locally)
del.icio.us -
sharing, tagging and subscribing to other bookmarks
recommends other sites to you based on your profile
Flickr sharing and tagging photos
Technorati search blogs, or switch and search "tags"

26. Thank you Questions? Darlene Fichter
University of Saskatchewan Libraries
library.usask.ca/~fichter/