Week #4



Right Wikis… Well I use Wikipedia whenever I have a general quarie, but apart from that I didn’t realise that there was more to wiki’s then just being a giant online dictionary / encyclopaedia.

I love the fact though that the German Wikipedia was more accurate then the german encyclopaedia.

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I so need to leave a post-it on my desk so that I can remember where I am up to with this program.

So anyway,

Discover task:

Wiki No. 1

Mint Museums etc…

I found it a little off-putting at first.

At the bottom of one of one of the info pages it said something along the lines of “you don’t have permission to comment on this page”. I got a little annoyed at first cause I thought ‘what was the difference between this and a normal web page?’. If the general public can’t comment and make changes to the pages then how is it different from a having a group run website?’.

However once I scrolled back to the top of the page and saw the option to edit the page I realised that the site just wants to to log into it’s system so as to stop bots (computer programs that sign up to systems or spread spam automatically) and the like.

I think my first reaction highlights the problems with facing a new incarnation of technology. Until you become familiar with them the new system it is very easy to get frustrated with it.


Wiki No.2

Wookieepedia

What can I say about wookieepedia?

Well it has enlitened me about the fact that there seems to be more to the Star Wars story then just the movies (which is kinda disturbing).

I like the Wiki though, it is easy to move between pages of information (via the hyperlinks) and I like pages that work like this.I think that’s one of the reasons the main Wikipedia pages is so popular. If you find the entry that you were looking for you can look at related pieces of information (with out having to go old school and look up information one topic at a time).

I think it resembles the way our own knowledge retrieval system (our brain) works. Our knowledge is part of a broader structure, this is part of that which is related to this’ and hyperlinks show and enable this. Where as word set down on a page are (as the Web 2.0 introduction video says) liner. Which I don’t think is how our mind functions (well my mind anyway… you know it probably explains why I’m so scattered most of the time).


Anyway must rust off for Mitchell training so I shall have to look at the third site next time.