This was to be the day I made progress on some important writing projects. I arrived at the office early and was ready to go. Then, I checked my email. There was a note that the wiki I maintain for student projects in my graduate course had been modified by someone I did not recognize so I thought I better take a look. Now, three hours later, I am back in my office. Instead of working on my writing projects, I felt the need to blog.
If you are an instructor, you have likely encountered a student comment that goes something like this – “that sounds good in theory, but …. “.
I have developed a response to these statements explaining that there is nothing as powerful as a good theory and students should recognize that what they are saying is that they prefer their “personal” theories over the theories proposed by others.
I am questioning the “theoretical” power of the crowd this morning. I did spend considerable time adjusting some security measures on one of my servers, but such adjustments are necessary only to cover for the inadequacies of “the crowd”. Some “Russians” are messing with my servers again. I hate to speak in stereotypes because my wife has very productive connections with some Russians. I also know that IPs can be spoofed. Anyway, the IPs of those causing the problems translated to RU. The crowd should have made this unnecessary.
The theoretical power of wikis is that these social resources combine the talents and dedication of multiple individuals. When the opportunity for abuse within an open system are raised, the theoretical response is that the dedicated folks can easy take care of the problem because a wiki allows previous versions to be activated or modifications to be reversed. The idea is that those who care can easily reverse damage caused by those who are malicious. Wikipedia is supposedly a reasonably good reference because those who care watch and fix things.
The theory assumes a) someone cares and b) someone watches. Perhaps tasks completed as assignments meet these conditions only until the grade is awarded or the semester ends. Or, because I believe my graduate students have a little more commitment, until authors forget about what they have written.
Perhaps active wikis meet the most optimistic version of the theory, but sites that are only sporadically worked on need a more “practical” version.
