First:
Sooner rather than later, we hope that discussions of
CompFAQs (and other ventures that pursue an open-source, community-based production of scholarship / disciplinary knowledge) will not have to focus on the software that makes these kinds of initiatives possible. CompFAQs is not about “wiki-ness”; the wiki software is the tool that makes CompFAQs possible. It is one of several tools we could have used, but we think it is the best one for us now. Many of us (comp/rhet types) tend to forget that technologies are tools that help us accomplish our larger goals; instead, too often, we let the tool become the focus, as in the recent wave of attention to the wiki software, as a next great thing (I could also include in the “wiki” slot “blogs,” “podcasts,” “multi-media,” “websites,” “e-portfolios,” etc.). Tools we use do shape / affect our processes and our products (and vice versa, too). But they remain tools we use in the larger activity system / learning environments in which we work.
Now to a brief explanation of “Why Wiki?”
What is (a) wiki?
- Brief history: 1995→
- Open-source, free, server- and ITS-friendly
- Wiki software is a tool for community-based (“commons-based”) production of web spaces
- Wiki software enables anyone with a browser and internet access to create / develop / maintain a web presence and / or to share in that enterprise
- Two new free sites to create your own wiki-space: JotSpot & Wetpaint
But is it / can it be professional?
- It seems counterintuitive but Wiki sites lend themselves to serious scholarship; they don’t turn into garbage sites. Wikipedia is an obvious example, but there are others:
- So maybe not really counterintuitive. The disparate print points of pre-internet scholarship also gradually coalesce and evolve into set positions, which stand open to modification. Wikis just do this in one location.
Why choose wiki software for the CompFAQs site?
- Simplest most powerful tool that enables the largest community to realize the fullest potential of the concept
- non-proprietary, open-source, free, active development community
- the combination of information system and delivery system fit a discipline as young as ours: inclusive, multiple-voiced, easily modified, in progress
- User-friendly, accessible: Users need only a browser and access to the worldwide web
- Readers can be writers: “Commons-based peer production” instead of contract- or property-based production
- Enables flexible, organic macro and micro structures
- Easy creation of hyperlinks to create / start new wiki pages or to link to existing pages
- Users need minimal knowledge of specialized markup language(s)
- History of revisions and revisions easily reversed
- Enables access for creating, editing, (even reading) that can be totally open or as restricted as necessary
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