trees are people too

the wiki has been somewhat challenging.

I thought it would be a more natural, ‘organic’ process, one that took on a life of its own, allowing for a freer creative practice, but I am finding our group (well, myself predominantly) are still approaching it in relatively formal and structured style. We have even discussed the formality of language, which I thought (just based on the nature of the wiki) would be quite relaxed and informal.

We need more tangents, more going on hunches, more go with the flow. Less structure, less consideration even (perhaps) and less concern for the directions we are going on. Our group meetings are affording us the basic outline, now we need to break out from them. It’s coming along, but slower than I thought. After lamenting about how wild the wiki was, how I wanted to control it, I am now realising more than ever that we need to let go, let it steer us somewhat, or else we risk simply transposing an essay into online format. I think we are all realising this, so we are certainly making advances. It is a start! I like the concept of it needing just to maintain a ‘soft focus’ around our subject, as Adrian mentioned. Sounds lovely and fuzzy to me.

On that point, however, can the wiki go too far off track?

An interesting example of the wiki taking on a life of its own is the case of circular references:

An anonymous user added information to Wikipedia’s entry on Sacha Baron Cohen three days before the now-referenced external article was written. The Independent wrote the referenced article apparently using Wikipedia as the source establishing his ‘Goldman Sachs’ career. Now Wikipedia uses as a references the article that came after the initial modification to Wikipedia itself.

So something incorrect is added to a wiki article, before being used as a primary source in an article. The wiki entry itself then goes on to reference the article, essentially making the incorrect fact in wikipedia now true, as it is referenced externally. Argh, makes your brain hurt, but interesting to see how the information evolves (and, as is mentioned, how fluid it actually is).

The concept of wikis and other ucg sites and the quality of information they provide fascinates me. Hope to write more on it soon.