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July 29, 2004
The Wiki Street Journal
Posted by Ross Mayfield
Great article by Kara Swisher in the Wall Street Journal today on wikis in the workplace. Quotes Clay and yours truly:
…Indeed, the creation of communal fabric is one that a wiki revives, says Clay Shirky, an interactive telecommunications professor at New York University, who has written extensively about the beneficial uses of social software like wikis in the workplace. “It’s got to be a fluid, ongoing conversation to work,” he says, noting that too much emphasis on the Internet has been about attracting giant passive audiences to Web sites over which they have little control. “But suddenly, people are realizing that perhaps the most human value actually occurs in smaller groups.”
In other wiki news, in the shameless plugin department, at OSCON they are running SubEthaKwiki, a Kwiki plugin for SubEthaEdit and a Technorati plugin. Kwiki plugins work on both the open source Kwiki and commercial Socialtext.
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1. JamesJayTrouble on August 1, 2004 4:37 PM writes...
"…Indeed, the creation of communal fabric is one that a wiki revives..."
Sorry, but a communal fabric would be revived by the people in the community, rather than any tools. In fact, looking at tools as a method of reviving a communal fabric illustrates how far removed the experience of community is, amongst both geeks/dweebs/nerds, in general, and bloggers in particular.
(All the crap blogged to the contray, about how the University of Blogaria being ABOUT COMMUNITY, and bloggers self-absorbed experience being more important than facts, notwithstading.)
The pretense is that it's about building community.. the fact is it's still about "how cool's the tool"... Just more sophisticated words being employed to cover up all this corn-fusion, is all.
From John Robb at his K-logs, 01/27/04:
"A Wiki engenders a community when it works correctly (my note: it helps to have a benevolent dictator on hand). And a community that has the right tools can take care of itself."
I don't think it's any surprise that bloggers tend to favor a tool that is enhanced by having benevolent dictators, because most are. That would be why bloggers HAFta be the writer/editor/publisher of their websites. That is why bloggers lie about a blog being a place, when it's just another form of website.
You can be the dictator of a place a lot easier than objective facts, which is why bloggers avoid the distinction. How many variants have been written on blogs of "my opinion is more important than your facts, and YOU CANNOT INVALIDATE MY OPINION!!!" The desparate need for self-esteem rears it's pathetic head in this way in many ways, not just blogs, but it sufficates what little intelligence exists in Blogaria completely.
But the right tool to take care of itself...?
That used-ta be called a brain, until the bloggers took over the current clerisy.
"``The only way you can write something that survives is that someone who's your diametrical opposite can agree with it,'' says Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia."
I'm sorry to hafta disrespect Jimmy Wales and Ward Cunningham, but this is illogic (to the point of being near-insanity) posing as wisdom. Again, a trait of bloggers. If you just say it loud enough, and enough people say it, 1 + 1 can equal 3 or 4 or whatever...
Someone who's your diametric opposite wouldn't be working on the same wiki, and wouldn't be a computer dweeb in the first place. It is a meme (ie a falsehood) that computer-folk have any intelligence to bring to bear on the subject of diametric opposites.. at least when it comes to people, rather than computers.
A wiki is a piss-ant method to disallow anything not Politically Correct and the kinds-a "truth" that canNOT offend ANYbody. Iow, the "easy" types of questions. That is why benevolent dictators work to the advantage of wiki's, and also one reason the meme of dictators being a good thing has flown for far too long.
It's bullshit, although a sufficiently incented group of PEOPLE could, actually, get around the deficiencies a wiki sets in place, and produce something useful.. I say could...
Doesn't mean a wiki is particularly useful, except for people that are ill-equipped to collaborate any other way, of course. (And I can just "hear" a reader telling themselves.. "but I collaborate a LOT and I LIKE WIKI'S and.."
Just because there seems to be a large number of these types of ill-equipped collaborators in Blogaria, a better solution is to teach people that collaboration involves working through differences of opinion/fact, not avoiding them and/or pretending they don't exist. And those ill-equipped to deal with this reality are a deficient group of people to begin a project with, in some respects however, no matter how bloggers slice and dice their "truth".
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