Tag: wiki

Collaborative, but not at the same time

I sometimes use a wiki in my graduate class. I call what I ask the students to do “public scholarship” – instead of developing content that only I will read, I require them to create products that will be available to other educators.

This semester I encountered a problem I think I understand but that has not been a problem before. Past projects have required students to develop their own portions of the wiki. This time, I divided students into 2-3 person groups and asked them to work together. What are the odds that in the time frame of a week two individuals will decide to connect at the same time, wait until they have entered a considerable amount of content, and then save? Evidently, the outcome is more probable than I would have thought. If the students would have saved it would not have prevented the problem, but it would have lessened the damage.

I run MediaWiki which I regard as a fairly sophisticated product, but I cannot think of a way of preventing this problem. A system would either have to automatically lock out a second user when someone had a page open or perhaps would have to rapidly update a common file after each keystroke.

If there is a solution to this problem, I would appreciate a note.

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The “theoretical” power of the crowd

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.

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Install MediaWiki on Windows Server

Lifehacker has a nice tutorial on the installation of MediaWiki on a machine using the Windows OS. I run my apps on Macs, but I know there are many who use the Windows platform to serve web content and getting started without guidance is always a challenge. Yes, MediaWiki is the core software associated with Wikiopedia, but you don’t have to projects of that magnitude in mind to use the powerful wiki software yourself.

My MediaWiki installation:

Student class project

Blogged with Flock

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Wikipedia Alternatives

Wikipedia has clearly become a destination for those seeking information online, but this category of web resource still attracts some competitors. Perhaps concerns regarding the quality of content allow opportunities for challengers.

Some offer an alternative based on a potentially superior way of organizating and sharing information (e.g., Freebase) and others an approach that address the information quality issue by incorporating an editorial element of some form. Citizendium falls into the second category (my earlier post on a plan to addres this shortfall). Comments on the vision, the process, etc. can be found on the About page. Among the adaptations – individuals are designated to observe and guide, individuals who contribute must be identifiable (e.g., use an email address that requires a real name).

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Wikipedia to “fork”

Ben Vershbow reports on if:book that one of the cofounders of Wikipedia wants to develop a similar project with a more controlled approach. The new approach will make use of editors so that there is greater control of the introduction and modification of content. The “fork” allows individuals to use Wikipedia content in creating a new site. The new site must offer others the same opportunity.

The wiki concept allowing anyone to modify existing content (which can then be changed back by the original authors) has been too idealistic for some. The idea of allowing contrasting approaches to compete for attention is interesting.

Further comment on the alternative approach.

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Class Wiki

I am teaching a course this summer focused on multimedia authoring. In keeping with the focus of the class, the students and I will be creating a wiki. On a theoretical level, I find the idea of communal authoring very intriguing. On a practical level, I can’t escape the concern that the work of my students will be vandalized. It is not so much that the original material cannot be recovered, it is more the problem of what comments are inserted and how those who work in K-12 settings interpret such experiences. What is the point of working with such environments if the participants are then unwilling to transfer the experiences to new situations.

In keeping with this concern, I have locked the wiki down to the most conservative level allowed. As system administrator, I must enroll users who then select a new password. Using this approach, MediaWiki allows all enrolled users to edit all posts. What I would prefer would be a different set of constraints – a user could protect personal posts, but unprotected pages could be edited by anyone. Perhaps I have yet to discover the combination of settings that allow such options.

I will likely offer more comments on my experiences with a class-based wiki as I see how things go. It is really not possible to say too much about such technologies based on what one accomplish with the software alone. This is one of those areas in which you really need a combination of technology skills and experience with the tools in action.

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