Contributing to wikis

The learning 2.0 website encourages users to learn to edit a wiki site for practice. The sandbox, or site for playing around, that they have set up was unavailable to me two years after the project originally initiated, so I instead went over to Wikipedia to try editing a page there. 

I went through the editing tutorial that is available on their website and found it to be very user friendly. They definitely want to legitimize the information that users provide, and ask people to cite sources and reference any changes made to a page. Even if the historian in me may look at some of the sources and realize that they aren't that great to begin with, as a general internet peruser and quick fact looker-upper, I do like knowing that the information has a basis somewhere, and, if traced back far enough, is probably from a legitimate source. 

However, I am now excited to go into the Salamanca wiki page and either edit the section about the Plaza Mayor or write a new page for it. There's a place where I have plenty of information and sources! I could potentially edit wikipedia in two languages, although the page in Spanish is already quite good. 

What I like about Wikipedia and other open source sites such as this is how it allows people to be passionate about particular areas and then share it with the world. Or at least other similarly interested people. I was out to dinner last night with a friend of mine who edits a open source sports magazine online, and she was mentioning how even though the content is not her cup of tea, the people who contribute as well as those who run it are extremely dedicated to their interests and really utilize the source. 

Wiki wiki what?

Wiki is fun to say, if nothing else, which puts it on my radar.

Anyway, in exploring some of the wikis offered by the learning 2.0 class, I have really expanded my knowledge of them. Prior to today, I had used wikipedia for finding a variety of quick information, filling in my gaps of knowledge when something small came up, or doing some preliminary thinking about research. Senior year at Kenyon, several of my friends began working on Kenyon's version of Wikipedia, KCPedia, which provides historical information about Kenyon, though is still a work in progress.

Looking today at some of the other wiki sites out there, I realized what a useful and collaborative effort it has potential for being for a library. I particularly like the idea of a book review wiki that links into the library catalog like this one developed by Princeton Public Library. Granted that site is old, from 2006, but as a model I think it is interesting. There are many possibilities for wiki functionality in the library today, and it's only beginning.