Wiki or Won’t He? The highs and lows of establishing a public sector wiki – Marieke Guy (UKOLN)

2.0 = an attitude, not a technology
things are changing for us, in the public sector
can we walk the tightrope of limited resources in this world?

a lot of people in the audience are using wikis (yay!)

one-page wikis like Writely and Stikipad versus multi-page wikis like MediaWiki, Twiki, Kwiki, Moin Moin, Instiki

Qwika – wiki search engine

public sector wikis:
government – Dowire.org, e-innovations, Bristol wireless, Flu wiki, Taskforce
could not find any U.K. libraries using wikis externally
higher education – DigiRepWiki, CETIS, Osswatch, h2g2, BBC intranet

general wiki issues:
– vandalism
– spam
– wiki etiquette
– searching (more tagging needed), archiving (ephemeral), organization of pages (no hierarchy)
– mark up (no standardisation)
– stopping your wiki from becoming an unmaintained storehouse of out-of-date information

organisational wiki issues
– organisational culture (freedom to move away from usual design, protocols, habits)
– liability, accountability, and copyright
– AUP
…more

IF Community Wiki
– using MediaWiki
– set up a knowledge base and a discussion base for peer group for how to use MW as a CMS for event

The Highs and Lows
what worked
– small group working – parallel session groups – changes are immediate, open access, great collaboration tool
– intranet discussion area
– once established techincal support isminimal
what didn’t work
– CMS discussion area didn’t take off, no champion for the wiki; need three people to launch a wiki – a midwife to launch it, a champion to get them to use it, and then someone to monitor it
– getting people to use it, SPAM

tie the wiki in more with the Institutional Web Management Community and related events
want to add more 2.0 ideas – syndication, tagging

ideas for your library
– book reviews
– comments section, suggestion box
– FAQs
– commonly asked questions (reference or general library)
– local history, personal stories
– course collaboration, e-portfolios
– library project work, input for research work

conclusion
– make sure people understand why it makes sense to share
– if your target group couldn’t converse offline then they probably won’t online
– important to reduce the barriers to participation by supporting the core group
– encourage accountability and group cohesion
– allow users to create their own pages
– guide new users
– be flexible
– be ready to try out an implement (or two)
– be patient

How many wiki people does it take to change a light bulb?
One, but anyone can change it back.

Brian Kelly
Reflections on Personal Experiences in Using Wikis

showed an early Wikalong wiki he used

showed spam in the wiki

encouraged librarians to add information to Wikipedia

then tried Twiki

warning tale about the wiki company not renewing their domain, so his wiki became filled with pornographic content; was fixed fairly quickly, though
this is not a reason to *not* use third-party services; everyone has the Google Toolbar but we don't worry about what will happen if they go away or get hacked

Tags: ILI2006