thinking about wikis


A recent post by Dave Pollard has me thinking about the medium itself, with the usual dangers. I need to articulate for myself just how this medium differs from the Web 1.0 page-at-a-time composition mode I'm so familiar with. It's certainly easier to make links, and to move around in the interlinked docs. What I'm not managing to do so far is inspire any participation by others, and the fact is that I probably haven't left space in what's looking like a personal and idiosyncratic construction.

At the moment, this medium seems like it would be ideal as a space to construct materials for a class, where the primary authorship is one person with an agenda. It's less obvious that it would support collective rumination, or maybe the problem is how to get such rumination started. I've observed this problem before: if one has never stepped into the waters, it's difficult to make the first step (easier to lurk, easier still to not allocate attention to the new thing).