CML Learn & Play Thing #15

I checked out (Ha!) a couple of the library wikis. The Princeton Book Lovers wiki kept returning access errors when I tried to move off the main page. Not desirable in a wiki, though the idea is sound. A wiki would lend itself to a book based reader's advisory tool.
I also looked at Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki which struck me up front as one of the best wiki applications for a public library. It could be used system wide or it could be tailored to specific locations. I also liked that it uses the familiar, comforting, Wikipedia layout. It turned out to be somewhat of a bummer to find that random checks in the collection development area found lots of links and someone's idea of a "good " structure but virtually no content. Yawn.
I had a better wiki experience outside of the library world. One of the automotive websites that I haunt launched a wiki at the beginning of '08. They used a clever method to quickly build content--a contest. Numerous prizes, some strong rules and active moderators helped the thing grow quickly in both quality and quantity. Even though I didn't win the tires, the die cast or the stainless Y-pipe, it was a lot of fun to author some pages:

http://www.camarowiki.com/index.php/Hurst

http://www.camarowiki.com/index.php/Goodyear_GS-C

What I find almost more fun than authoring is editing. Lurking and trolling for misspellings, bad grammar, and poor syntax gives one a sort of perverse feeling of being simultaneously covert and constructive. While the concept behind Wikis is to be uber-collaborative and something in which any/everyone can participate my experience with them in practice is that a relatively narrow "cadre"does most of the heavy lifting and many people are not thick skinned enough to handle the ruthless editing required to keep a wiki(pedia) well documented and objective and not a mish-mash of opinion, myth and hearsay (like in a blog!!)