Wiki Wiki Wiki

I finally was able to figure out how to enter text into my Wiki page, thanks to Jesse. Thanks, Jesse!! Turned out I had to click on the EasyEdit button once, then close it out, then click on it again before I could access the text box.

Anyway, I am not a huge fan of wikis. I used one in a group project during library school, and while I could appreciate having an online document available at any time, I did not like that we could not save previous versions. It bothered me that we couldn't go back to what we had originally written, especially if we had changed things extensively. I thought the wiki that we used was very intuitive and easy to use, but I just have a preference for having a 'paper trail', so to speak.

I do use Wikipedia for current cultural things - especially celebrity ephemera that I just do not pay attention to on a regular basis. I decided to test Wikipedia's accuracy on a serious subject, and searched ADHD. The page had 14 sections, and there were at least 500 revisions to it. I found all of the information I read was pretty accurate and balanced, which is a good thing. There were 43 discussion forums, and that was interesting to see. I think from this I can conclude that Wikipedia's powers that be are being fairly vigilant about accuracy on stuff that matters, and that is good. I wouldn't recommend that a student use this as his/her major source for information, but it is a good place to start, even just to get ideas on what to research.

The explanation of wikis on the North Texas 23 Things says, "Some libraries use internal wikis to manage their policies and procedures." This is an example, to me, where a paper trail is important. If there is a 'history' section like in Wikipedia, perhaps this would work.

But I do love the name, Wiki!