Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Wonderful World of Wikis

It's not a blog but ... It's time to visit Wikipedia. But this time, for the first time, don't use it. Read it. Pull it apart. What are the rules? What are the ideas behind it? What is its code?

7 comments:

Chris A said...

I just started and I must tell ya...

It's HARD not to use it!

Aldon Hynes said...

Colin, I hope you don't mind me poking my nose into your class again, but I thought I would toss out a few other things to check out.

Staying close to Wikipedia I would encourage you to check out wikinews.

Another interesting resource is Congresspedia.

All of these are using MediaWiki, which is free software that anyone can set up. (I've set up various MediaWiki sites in the past).

Related to Congresspedia, there is also the CT Election 2006 wiki set up by our friends at Connecticut Loccal Politics. It is using PB Wiki, which is a service allowing anyone to set up their own Wikis.

Hope this helps....

Aldon Hynes said...

P.S. I don't know if you are going to be talking about the Seigenthaler affair, but people who are interested would do well to read David Weinberger's post about this.

Aldon Hynes said...

While I'm at it, I should probably pimp my post, Jon Lebkowsky, and Cory Doctorow's post.

Chris A said...

Following Mr. Hynes' impulse, I, too, will poke my nose into your class. My Harvard-sophomore brother just told me about www.urbandictionary.com which is similar to Wikipedia in the group contribution to the definition of SLANG words. It has a rating system, however, which allows the most agreed upon definition to be at the top of the list. This may be one step towards reducing misinformation. (Try "dork" for some entertaining and quite shocking information.)

HighlyAdorned said...

I love urban dictionary. I use it all the time. It's one of the links on the side bar my blog (under 'sites I like'). Do people actually use those links? Sometimes I'll hit on people's links list, but I have to say not that often.

DCSands said...

I'm on Urban Dictionary...look up Russian Switch. (I'm not quite sure why Sinbad decided to use my name in the definition)