What's a Wiki then?

So I finally gave in, and got me a wiki...I don't know why I didn't do it before. Well actually, I know exactly why I didn't. FEAR! I know, you're shocked. Me...afraid of some technology, crazy eh?Let me tell you a terrible story of ignorance and education...

A certain lecturer mentioned the word wiki to me months ago. 'What's that?' I think to myself, why don't I find out from the web? And where do I go for my information? well Wikipedia of course! So I visit Wikipedia for their definition of a wiki and I try to read about it. I see the first bit of techie stuff about syntax and html and think 'aggghhh!'

Meltdown.

OK. I think, I can handle this, it can't be that hard. What's a great example of a wiki? Oh right, Wikipedia! (Yes, it took me that long to work out what a wiki was, and yes I now know the clue's in the name)Well, that just looks like a big encyclopedia, what benefit would that be to our SPEEDsters? And how can they interact with that, wouldn't it be really (really really) boring? So I guess I just said nah, it's not for us.

But that lecturer was joined by other people saying, no you've got it wrong, it's not just for facts and figures. It can be for anything...huh? So I look again.

Now, how many pages has Wikipedia got? According to the stats page Wikipedia has 2,186,422 articles in English today. How do they keep tabs on all of that? How do they make sure they stay in control of it all? How do they stop people putting up bad stuff?

Meltdown number two.

OK, so I haven't quite worked out meltdown number two, but I felt my fear and did it anyway . Let's face it, there's not going to be 2 million pages on any wiki I can make. Not this side of Christmas anyway. So I am now prepared to give it a go. YouTube (and Simon C) then got me into Lee LeFever, and he helped me to get my head round it (finally) with this simple clip

OK, next question what can we do with a wiki? The scary answer is pretty much anything we want...the less scary option is to use our wiki like a yearbook, or as a directory for ourselves, and see what grows from there.

So here it is...The NTU SPEED wiki...use it!