#17 wiki encore

Have dutifully added my humble blog to the list of favourites.

Poked around a little bit more. I can see a lot of ways that having a wiki could be really useful—group assignments or tasks, for example, particularly if you set up the structure so that different people have the main responsibility for fleshing out the content for particular areas.

I think I remember my brother sending me a link to a wiki that was a reference tool for a fictional world, with entries on geography and history and politics and everything, all according to the interest of those who got involved. Although very geeky (my brother is a geek) it's also kind of neat.

It could work for book reviews (as one of the sites linked to in the other post showed; I actually liked that one). It could work as a way of managing user-generated input, although I'm not clear as to whether the software or functionality could be embedded as a component of a larger site. It does have a lot of possibilities, and if it's an add-on instead of the main focus of something you do, then it's not so important if nobody contributes, or does so erratically.

Basically, a wiki seems like a good collaborative tool—whether it's a collaboration of equals (roughly) or whether it's a secondary contribution.

I do find it mildly discouraging to have to learn an entirely new way of adding content (despite PBWiki's claim that it's as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich and requires little training and coding, it seems more complicated to me). It's a useful reminder that those without a basic grasp of html (mine is pretty basic, but fortunately I do have one) must find blogging and wikis and lots of other things more intimidating, which no doubt contributes to the WYSIWYG-induced popularity of, say, blogger vs other journalling software like livejournal, which does require more in the way of html if you want formatting.

The other thing that occurs to me (rather belatedly, and it's a bit of a chestnut) is that all these collaborative social networking technology tools are all very well and good if you have a computer and reliable internet access, but if you don't, you're pretty much stuck up the proverbial without the proverbial. I know that historically, new technological developments (oooh, paper! oooh, movable type!) have always created an initial division between those who had them and those who didn't before becoming more widespread. But I do think we need to maintain our awareness that not everyone wants to use these technological tools and not everyone who wants to use them has the ability to. I have already written longer than I meant to, so will not go into this more at the moment, but the library's role as intermediary and obligation to be all things to all people is certainly worth pondering.

Maybe in my free time.

#14 technorati

I am currently starting up this post because the search blog posts for the phrase "Learning 2.0" is running in the other window. It's been about two minutes so far and I'm still waiting for the results.

Oh look, it just came up with an error message: "cannot find server". Let's try their "new streamlined server for lightning-fast, blog-only results". Well, that only took about 10 seconds. Slow lightning, but at least it didn't time out.

Except the results I got were instead for the term "tag". Huh. Weird. Second time round, it's worked properly.

Okay, comparison time: blog posts that mention "learning 2.0", unsurprisingly, outnumber the number of posts tagged "learning 2.0" (2931 vs 3). I would expect that blogs about "learning 2.0" would be more than tags, but less than blog posts. Let's see if I'm right. Oooh, the tension...

532. Yup. Interestingly, the number of blogposts with "some" authority mentioning "learning 2.0" is only 391. What's this authority thing? I know I said I wasn't getting sidetracked this week, but I am intrigued despite myself.

Oh, it's like a citation tracker. Okay, that's mildly interesting. I think it's kind of funny (in that way that's not actually amusing) that this reference tool for tracking the success of journal articles in an academic world has been applied to the vast realms of inanity spewing out of the blogosphere. Especially something like this, which doesn't actually measure authority at all—it measures popularity. I guess if it's good enough for Google, it's good enough for the world. Why do I feel like I'm back in high school?

I will decline to make my tags available to be searched by the world at large, thanks. It would be too depressing to find myself in the "no authority" category.

#8 feeding you, feeding me

I have set up my Bloglines account. I actually did this last week, I just didn't get around to posting about it. And sorry, those of you who were eagerly awaiting whatever little nuggets of interestingness you were going to get out of finding out what I like to keep up with, I'm not sharing. It's mine, all mine!

Seriously, I do have a slight issue with the sort of compulsive publicising that Web 2.0 seems to encourage. I think social networking and things like that are fine, no dramas, no issues. I can see how sharing your feeds could be productive in a professional context. But why on earth would you want anyone in the world with an internet connection to be able to access your bookmarks? Sorry, but there are some things the world a) doesn't need to know and b) probably isn't very interested in knowing anyway. Just like the world doesn't need to know what I had for breakfast, or the cute thing my cat did today, or how long I've spent bludging on the internet when I was supposed to be doing meaningful work.

I realise I am coming across as slightly grumpy here. The thing I want to stress is that it's all about context. Social networking online is simply that, social. Some aspects can translate into a professional context, others not so much. For example, I don't particularly think that blogging works for most organisations, because most organisations seem to use it as another marketing tool (hey look at the neat new programs we've got/products we've produced/books we've bought/widgets we've widgeted). And sorry, but no one cares. Blogs are personal, they're about connecting people with people and appealing on that individual level. And just like you wouldn't go out and try to make friends with every single person you met on a particular day, you wouldn't want to read every single blog (even were such a thing possible). Most of them will seem mundane, pedestrian, dull. But amongst all the corporate dross and meaningless chatter, you'll find someone who sees things the same way you do, or makes you laugh, or has something interesting to say—the way you might see someone who has a nice smile, or is wearing a really interesting combination of shoes and handbag, or says "thank you" like they mean it.

So, in lieu of publicising my Bloglines account, I tender Miss Information, a blogger who has that effect on me. I've added her blogs (and the other ones I've embedded in my profile, as well as a select few others, including my favouritest webcomic) to my Bloglines account, which will remain as a private tool for my private use. And I actually think it will be useful, and I probably wouldn't have given it a go had it not been for this program, so elephant stamps all round.

#3 blogging

The inaugural post. Perhaps more of interest to follow.