Thing 10. Wikis

Yes, my contrarian nature is coming back again after going through a few previous "Things" where I actually thought some of these 2.0 new technology bells and whistles might actually have a place in a library web setting....now I am back to my old self...I hate these Wikis, at least all the ones I explored (but not exhaustively since we don't really have the time in this project to do that...). Might have to put out there that this is very overblown stuff...every wiki I examined seemed so boring and dull that there can be no doubt that it was done by a committee writing like a committee would write...I can't help but think that one skilled editor or writer-in-chief would put out a more interesting product with their eyes closed...

And that to me is a Wiki's weakest part---no personality, and little humanity in the writing, unless you think everyone throwing in anything they want will eventually bring a human face to the subject (you heard the story of the million monkeys, each typing for a million years that turns out something better than Shakespeare's??). Might work in the giant Wikipedia because that is really what happens...their size of participants is huge...and good work does get done, but only in a dry encyclopedia type of work...haven't seen a wiki on any other type that people would ever go to before a more typically written web site...My belief, at this point, is that wikis don't work very well in these small-sized wikis...and the editing process looks like something only a seriously disturbed geeky type would even want to get deeply involved in...the editing page looks like gibberish to me...rather just write the thing from scratch myself...

I did though have a bit of fun doing some editing and making suggestions in the 23 Things Wiki...there are some good times to be had correcting others (but I can only dish it out..I don't think I could take it, so hate to end up writing something and then having someone "fixing me up" or something...too much a downer, this group think thing...