Wikis and other collaborative editing tools
The term wiki is thought to have come from a Hawaiian term meaning 'hurry quick', though some people contend that it is actually an acronym for 'what I know is'. A wiki is an editable web page which enables many-to-many communication. There are many possible uses for a wiki, including research collaboration, multi-authored papers, project work and maintenance of documents which require regular updating, such as manuals. One of the big advantages of collaborating with wikis is that it should reduce email traffic!
Perhaps the best known wiki is Wikipedia, a phenomenally popular community encyclopaedia. Although wikis are thought of as a fairly recent development, Tim Berners-Lee, the man generally credited with 'inventing' the web, originally intended to create an online environment in which people would edit each other's pages when he first began developing the system which would ultimately become the world wide web.
How to do it?
As with blogging, there are many different wiki creating and hosting services available. Wikimatrix is an excellent site which gives an overview of the key features of many wiki services, together with a Choice Wizard which enables you to specify your requirements and see which services match. There are also plenty of other non-wiki collaborative editing tools, such as Googledocs and SubEthaEdit.
Examples
Most wiki-hosting services have a built-in search system for you to find wikis of interest, and there are some general wiki-search engines such as Wikiindex. Wikis for Professionals are developing wikis to enable researchers to share knowledge and data. Other good examples include those hosted by the Murray-Rust research group, the e-science institute and the Research Administrators' wiki. There are many expertise databases in the BCE sector, including this one on motorsport, but they are mostly centrally managed. However, Knowhow Wales hosts a collection of expertise databases, which does enable others to add or amend records.
Murray-Rust Research group wiki
Benefits and Barriers of Wikis and other Collaborative Editing Tools
Potential benefits for users:
Many of the benefits of wikis derive from them being an online service, and thus capable of being supported by assistive technologies. In addition to these benefits, wikis give an opportunity for users with different types of knowledge, confidence and communication to contribute equally to a joint publication. Collaborators who lack confidence to argue a case in a 'live' face-to-face debate can feel more comfortable making the same points in a wiki environment where the pace of discussion is slower and the quality of the thinking is more significant than force of personality. Wikis can be particularly helpful at including people who are shy, or who have hearing or communication difficulties.
Potential barriers for users:
In addition to potential socioeconomic barriers outlined above, wikis can create difficulties for some users. The iterative nature of wikis (sections appearing and disappearing as a document evolves) can be very difficult to track, especially for those with slow reading speeds. A similar problem can occur for those accessing the information via text-to-speech or screen readers as they are listening to the content and trying to compare it against their memory of a previous version. This can be straightforward on a small document but very difficult on a large one.
Using images within Wikis
As with blogs, media content such as images can often be used to great effect within wikis or similar collaborative tools. Some wiki software comes with its own album facilities or these can be added through plug-ins. Unlike blogs, however, images cannot be automatically dropped onto your wiki pages or pushed in from photosharing services. This is because the dynamic, shifting nature of wiki pages requires a human to decide where to place an image - and whether it will remain there!
If you're using images in wikis, it's worth looking at the options provided for displaying your images. Sometimes, for example, the software will automatically resize any images added to the wiki page. While this can be a real time-saver, it can also, depending on your content, compromise the quality and legibility of your image. You may find that there is an option of generating a thumbnail that links to a larger version of the image. Consider too the support your wiki offers for adding captions or additional information (e.g. 'alt' text) to your images.
TASI has produced a resource providing a lot more information about using images effectively within wikis (Images in Blogs and Wikis). This resource also considers wikis as a useful source of images.
