Week 4: Wikis: Day 4
Wiki, Blog, “social,” even RSS can be four letter words and leave a bad taste in the mouth. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people shutter at the very mention of any of these. Yet their bad raps are a form a pre-judgement derived (often times) from a single bad encounter which they project upon the subject as a whole.
“People have been character smeered on Wikipedia.”
“Schools won’t let their students cite Wikipedia because it is so often wrong.”
“If anyone can post anything on Wikipedia, it must be incorrect.”
There is some truth to these statements. Yet, as Sandra Ordonez, a spokeswoman from Wikipedia, has said in an email interview,
“Wikipedia is the ideal place to start your research and get a global picture of a topic, however, it is not an authoritative source. In fact, we recommend that students check the facts they find in Wikipedia against other sources. Additionally, it is generally good research practice to cite an original source when writing a paper, or completing an exam. It’s usually not advisable, particularly at the university level, to cite an encyclopedia.”
Sound advice.
Yet the prejudice does not stop there. They assume that if Wikipedia can be abused, “certainly a wiki in the workplace will be abused.” Not so fast. Change the circumstances and you change the outcome.
How can Intel create a wiki, amass tens of thousands of pages of information, have millions of page views yet have relatively no abuse? Again, the context has changed.
When we use wikis inside an organization there isn’t any hiding. If you abuse, your name is all over it. No one wants to be ‘that person’ so we all understand that civility rules. It is either that or your job. I’d take the former.
Also, what about bad information? To that I say, open your wallet or purse or daytimer. Look inside. Do you see anything (expired cards, notes, old auto insurance cards) that are out of date or old information? I decided to look in my wallet – which I like to keep lean and to a minimum size – and found five pieces of such bad/old information. If we don’t keep our own personal wallets up to tip-top shape, why are we faulting something that could involve hundreds or even thousands of people?
Very often, however wikis are for a very specific purpose. A meeting, or documentation or for project collaboration. Specific people are constantly using those pages and if there is anything incorrect or out of date, they often change it.
Because of the change of venue and those involved, wikis become highly useful. Realistically, do pages get out of date? You bet. But, like the note in my wallet, if it is out of date and not useful anymore, it is ignored. And that is OK. It isn’t needed so whether it is up to date or out of date doesn’t matter to me.
I could go on and on about negative stigmas. But until you try wikis you may not understand. Kind of like watching someone ride a bike. Someone who has never seen one before might ask, “How do they stay up! That is impossible.” Sure, it is VERY difficult if you are standing still. But if you change the context, the circumstances, and ad motion to it, it all of the sudden makes sense.
To Do: In the comments, tell us how you have used a wiki.
