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wiki love
I have a not-so-secret fascination with Wikis. To me, a Wiki embodies the real potential of the internet. So over at the new RBA forum (hint hint) I posted about the possibility of creating a Wiki for the romance genre. I'm going to reproduce the post here in part, because I want to raise some questions. Here it is:
I'm thinking there's something we can start as a community that has potential for real, wide-reaching positive effect for the genre.So tell me the truth, is this the ultimate in geekishness? Am I the only person who sees this possibility as fun? I have ideas for a couple different Wikis. My fondest dream is to do one for Dorothy Dunnett's novels. Particularly (or at least, the part that would interest me most) would be the Niccolo novels, but the wondrous think about a Wiki is that when they work, you've got enough people to cover everything. I can leave Lymond for the Lymond lovers.A Wiki is an open source encyclopedia type website where any registered participant can add material, and everything is cross referenced and linked. It's easy to use -- no knowledge of any coding language required -- and easy to administer. There is Wiki software built right into this site, we only would have to activate it and do some initial setup.
'Wiki' means "quick!" in Hawai'ian Creole, in part because once a Wiki is established, it can grow exponentially. People suggest categories for articles, write new articles or add to existing ones. Comments to existing articles are a necessary part of the process and evolution.
An excellent overview article about wikis, what they can be and their potential, is here. Here is a shorter, "plain English" explanation. For an excellent example of a hugely successful Wiki, there's Wikipedia.org, which is a good place to explore to see how the whole concept works. Wikis can be small or large, confined to a single topic (many professors and teachers are now setting up Wikis for a particular class) or expansive and inclusive (Wikipedia is the best example of that).
Or I could, if I weren't the only person in the world whose heart beats faster at the idea.
September 24, 2005 07:16 AM
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Comments
Hey, my heart beat faster the very first time I saw a wiki. Thanks for those articles. Here are a couple of other examples for folks who don't have the addiction yet...
SciFi/Fantasy:
http://www.infoshop.org/sf/index.php/Main_Page
One show:
http://battlestarwiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
One series of books (in its early stages):
http://harrypotter.wikicities.com/wiki/Main_Page
Posted by: robyn at September 24, 2005 08:07 AM
Love your new delayed-comment message. Both stylish and helpful! I wonder if a reason my comments often seem to go into the Maw of Delay is that they include urls? If I were a blogwatchdog, I'd probably bristle at links, too, as a sign of casino spammers and pharmasalesmen. Maybe there's a switch based on that?
Posted by: robyn at September 24, 2005 10:07 AM
Robyn --- ooooh, Battlestar Galactica Wiki. Excellent. I'm going to save the others for when I have many hours to devote to the trance that comes along with a new Wiki.
Your first comment was indeed delayed because of the three links. This newer version of Movable Type still has some bugs, most prominent among them its inability or unwillingness to believe me when I say that the people in the "trusted commenter" list (of which you are one) can post as many links as they like. Still hoping to straighten that out.
Posted by: sara at September 24, 2005 10:27 AM
BTW, you just stole two hours of my life by getting me started wikisurfing before I was fully conscious and therefore still poorly defended... I did find two great new terms: WikiRapture (*g* a step up from WikiTrance) and WikiPuppy: "A WikiUser who discovers wiki, loves it, gets excited, and pees all over the wiki. MostlyHarmless but can turn into a WikiGremlin."
Posted by: robyn at September 24, 2005 10:38 AM
WikiPuppy. WikiPuppy. That's just excellent.
Posted by: sara at September 24, 2005 10:58 AM
Reminded me immediately of the FarscapePuppyPile, which has been occuring lately when a lj user or blogger discovers Farscape, and is soon set upon by a small mob of more experienced fans who are so excited to have scented a new playmate that they pile all over her, yapping incoherently. This apparently causes occasional alarm on the part of the recipient *g*
Posted by: robyn at September 24, 2005 11:24 AM