Thing 10 - Wikis

What did you find interesting about the wiki concept?
There are many things I find interesting about the wiki concept. The first is the concept of linking between pages. Wikis take full advantage of the hyperlinked web environment. Wikis are read differently than other forms of "linear" media. Quite often while reading Wikipedia I've clicked a hyperlinked word to a new article before I've finished reading the original article. This process is often repeated with the new article and can be repeated ad infinitum or until my eyes are tired of staring at a computer screen.

What types of applications within libraries and schools might work well with a wiki?
Our library uses PBwiki as a knowledge management tool. We post information from reference questions and organize them by topic. I like using a wiki, because we can create numerous indexes that link to the page containing information about the reference question. These can be arranged different ways - alphabetically by topic, by subject, by professor, by date, by class, etc. The reference librarians can create as many indexes linking to these pages as they deem necessary or useful, and they do not take up extra "space" in the same way multiple indexes would take up pages in a book.

Many teachers/faculty "ban" Wikipedia as a source for student research. What do you think of the practice of limiting information by format?
I don't think it is so much the "format" of Wikipedia that these teachers and faculty are concerned about. If it was, say, a science wiki created by a group of world-renowned scientists and accessible to the public, I think the teachers would be more willing to allow it as a source for student research. Wikipedia is occasionally edited by scholars in various fields, but also by many people who are not experts at what they write about. I think these teachers and faculty members are more concerned with authority than format, which is a perfectly reasonable concern.