The following 1357 words could not be found in the dictionary of 615 words (including 615 LocalSpellingWords) and are highlighted below:

800x600   ability   able   about   above   absolutely   accommodate   account   accountability   accounts   accumulated   actions   actor   acts   actually   add   added   additions   addresses   affect   again   against   age   agency   ages   agree   Alan   Albert   Aleksandr   all   All   allow   allowed   allows   almost   alone   along   already   although   always   am   amaze   amazing   ambiguous   America   among   amount   amounts   an   anarchism   and   And   Andrew   angel   annoying   anonymous   Another   another   answer   Antti   anxious   Anybody   anymore   anyone   anything   anyway   Anyway   anywhere   Apache   appeal   appears   appreciate   approach   approximately   Aqsis   aren   arguments   Arguments   around   arrange   aspect   ass   Assume   assume   assumption   assumptions   at   attempts   attention   Attic   audience   auditable   Australia   authentication   automated   automatic   available   avoid   away   back   bad   balance   balancing   base   based   bashing   basis   be   because   become   becomes   beef   been   before   behave   behavior   behind   being   believe   below   Ben   benefit   Berlin   best   better   between   big   biggest   bin   bird   bit   blocked   blocking   blogging   blogs   blown   book   boring   both   Both   bother   bothered   breakdown   Breuer   Brian   brilliant   bring   broadcast   Brrrrrlbllb   Bruce   bug   building   built   bunch   busy   But   but   By   by   c2   called   camaraderie   came   can   Can   cannot   capabilities   care   cares   case   Cates   cause   cease   ceefour   centralised   certainly   challenge   challenges   chance   changed   Changes   changes   changing   chaos   chaotic   check   chosen   claimed   claims   claptrap   class   clean   close   co   collaboration   collaborative   Collantes   column   columns   Columns   Coman   combination   come   comedi   comes   coming   comment   comments   communities   community   companions   company   complete   completely   complex   complicated   compromise   computers   concept   concrete   conditions   conflict   confronted   confused   consensus   considered   considering   constant   constantly   constituents   constructive   constructively   contacts   contained   contemplate   contrast   contribute   control   controlled   controversy   convenient   conveniently   convinced   cookie   cool   couldn   count   counteracted   couple   coupled   couples   crap   created   cries   critical   Crowd   crowd   cult   curious   Currently   curtailing   damage   dangers   dat   date   Date   David   day   days   de   dead   deal   debate   debian   decides   dedication   defences   Defences   degrades   Delete   delete   deleted   deletes   deletion   deletions   Deliberate   deliberately   deny   depend   deranged   Derek   design   desire   destroy   destroying   Destructive   destructive   detected   developed   did   didn   Didn   difference   Different   different   difficult   digging   digression   directly   disable   discourse   discovered   discussion   discussions   display   disrepait   Distort   docbook   Docbook   docs   documentation   does   doing   Don   don   Donald   done   doomed   doubt   down   driving   dumb   during   each   easier   easily   easy   eat   edit   editable   edited   ego   Either   either   else   embedded   encounter   encountered   endless   engage   engaged   engine   engines   enjoy   enough   entered   equally   erased   errors   esp   especially   established   evangelism   even   event   ever   every   everybody   everyone   everything   exactly   example   excels   except   exist   expected   expecting   experience   Ezust   facilities   fact   facts   fails   failure   fairly   familiar   far   fascinated   Fascinating   favorite   fear   Fear   feature   Felix   fence   few   field   figure   file   files   find   fine   Firstly   Fix   fix   fixed   fixing   flames   flaw   flexible   focal   Folk   folks   follow   font   For   for   force   foreign   forget   form   format   formatting   former   forms   forum   found   framework   freedom   friend   from   front   Front   frustration   fulfilling   full   fully   fun   further   future   gangs   gated   gave   gedal   geeks   geeky   general   generally   Generate   generated   Germany   get   gets   getting   give   given   gives   giving   gmx   Gnomes   go   going   good   goofiness   got   grammar   granted   great   greatest   green   Greenberg   Greetz   Griffis   grin   Group   groups   guess   had   handful   haphazard   hard   harder   haven   Having   having   he   hear   heard   hearing   heated   help   helpful   Hence   hentai   her   Hey   hey   hierarchal   his   history   Hollingsworth   holy   honor   hooking   hope   hopes   horribly   hostile   hours   how   How   howeaver   however   However   Huh   human   humming   hump   hype   hypercard   Hypercard   icon   idea   ideas   idiot   idiots   if   If   illegal   imaginary   immediately   implementing   implicit   important   impose   improve   in   In   inclined   incredible   indiscriminate   individual   individuals   indulge   information   informed   infra   initial   insecure   insert   inserted   insertions   inside   insightful   installed   installing   Instead   instinct   integrity   intelligence   intentions   interaction   interface   intermixed   internal   interpreted   into   intr   intranet   intrigued   introduction   invest   investigate   inviting   involved   ip   isn   issue   issues   its   itself   January   Jason   Jedi   jedit   Jedit   Jimmy   Joel   Jon   Jul   Junkies   just   keep   keeping   kicking   kicks   kids   kill   kind   kinds   know   knowing   known   Koltsoff   Kuntsi   Laptop   large   larger   last   Last   learn   learned   learning   least   leave   leaves   left   less   level   leverage   Life   like   likely   lines   link   Linux   lists   little   live   ll   loaded   local   login   logins   loner   long   longer   look   Look   looked   looking   Looking   looks   Looks   loss   lot   love   Macro   macro   macros   made   Mahyar   mail   mailto   majority   Make   make   making   Making   malicious   managing   mangled   mangling   manually   many   Mapache   mapache   mark   Market   mass   material   matter   Mattison   Maurice   maybe   Maybe   mb   Mc   Me   me   mean   meaninful   meaningful   means   meant   mechanisms   memory   Merel   merge   mess   messed   Metababy   metababy   method   Microsoft   middle   might   Miller   million   mind   minded   mindset   mine   minority   minutes   mis   mode   moderation   moderator   Monty   more   Most   most   mostly   motivated   motivation   moving   much   multi   must   my   My   myself   naturally   nature   navigation   necessary   need   needed   Needless   needs   negate   nerdish   net   Net   never   new   next   Nice   Nick   nit   No   no   nobody   noise   non   none   note   nothing   Notice   notice   noticed   Now   now   number   numerous   obvious   occured   occurrence   of   off   offended   offer   often   oh   ok   old   older   Oli   On   on   Once   once   One   one   ones   online   only   Only   oooh   open   Open   opinions   opponent   Opponents   Oppose   opposed   optimized   optimum   Or   or   organization   organizing   original   originally   ornery   ot   other   others   our   ourselves   out   outcome   outside   outweigh   over   overcome   overwritten   own   owners   page   Page   pages   pain   painful   paki   paper   paradigm   paragraph   part   participants   participate   passerby   passers   password   pathological   pause   pay   payoff   pedantic   People   people   perhaps   Perhaps   perishes   permanent   person   personal   Perth   perverse   Peter   picking   picture   pl   place   places   plan   plugged   plugin   plugins   poetry   point   Point   Points   population   porn   possibilities   possibility   post   pour   powered   pre   precise   presently   pressed   pretty   prevailing   prevent   previous   Probably   probably   problem   problems   process   productive   professional   program   project   promise   promptly   prone   properly   prospect   prospers   protect   protects   prove   provide   psycology   public   publish   purpose   put   putter   Python   python   qualities   quality   questioned   quickly   quite   r0x   racist   racket   raise   random   randomly   rapidly   rare   ratatosk   rather   ratings   ratio   rational   Rauch   Re   re   reached   reaches   react   reacted   read   reading   real   reality   realize   realizing   really   reason   reasonable   reasonably   recent   Recent   reconstruction   recorders   recover   recovering   reduced   refined   refrain   regard   regards   regretted   regularly   relies   remains   remind   Reminds   reminds   removed   renderer   replace   replaced   replaces   Replacing   report   represent   require   rest   restore   restored   result   reversible   revert   reverted   reverting   revision   revisions   reward   Richard   ridiculous   right   rob   rocket   rocks   rollback   room   ruined   running   Running   sabotage   Sabotage   sabotaged   sabotagers   saboteurs   said   Same   same   Sandboxes   saw   say   saying   scale   scheduled   school   science   screen   search   searching   seconds   secure   secured   secures   security   See   see   seem   seemingly   seems   seen   seldom   select   self   sense   sentence   Sep   Sept   series   server   set   settle   severely   share   sharing   she   sheer   sheet   short   shortcomings   shortcuts   sickos   signal   Sil   similar   Simon   simple   simplest   simply   Since   single   site   sites   size   skipping   Slashdot   slashdot   slight   slow   small   smaller   smart   Snap   Snip   snipsnap   snuck   So   so   sociopathic   solution   solve   Some   some   Somebody   someone   Someone   something   sometimes   somewhere   soon   sooner   Sorry   sort   sorts   sounds   source   span   spans   Speaks   special   speed   spraycans   Spread   spring   stage   stalking   Stanley   Star   start   started   stated   statements   stays   still   stories   Strangely   strength   strengths   stroganoff   struck   structure   students   stuff   stupid   subjects   submit   subscribed   subtle   succeed   such   Such   sufficient   suited   summer   supervising   supervisors   suppose   Sure   sure   surfer   survive   syndicate   synergy   sysadmin   system   systems   T06   T09   T10   T11   T13   T14   T17   T19   T54   tables   tag   tagging   take   Talking   talking   tat   taught   technically   technology   tell   Tell   tends   terrible   Terry   test   text   texts   than   thanks   that   That   The   the   their   them   then   Then   There   there   thereby   these   they   They   thing   things   thingy   Think   think   Thinki   this   This   Thomas   Thoroughly   those   though   thought   thoughts   threads   three   Time   time   tit   to   Tocqueville   Today   too   took   tool   topic   torn   total   Totally   totally   touch   towards   traduced   trashed   Tried   tried   trivia   trolling   trolls   trombone   trouble   truly   trust   try   trying   tuned   turn   turns   two   types   typically   typos   uncontrolled   undamaged   understand   Unfortunately   unknown   unless   unpoplular   unreasonable   unsuccessful   unsupervised   unusable   up   us   usability   usable   use   used   useful   usemod   Usenet   user   username   users   using   valid   validate   vandal   vandalism   various   ve   version   versioning   versions   Very   very   via   video   View   view   Viewpoint   viewpoint   viewpoints   visit   visited   volumes   Waldmann   want   wanted   wanting   wants   war   Ward   Wars   wars   was   Wasn   watchers   way   ways   We   we   Web   web   webapps   Weblog   websites   weeks   weird   well   Well   went   Western   what   What   whatever   when   where   whether   which   While   while   who   Who   whole   Why   why   Wikipedia   wikipedia   will   willing   win   winks   wins   wiped   wiping   wiser   wish   wished   With   with   within   without   won   wonder   word   Wordpad   wordpad   words   work   Work   worked   workers   Works   works   world   Worpdad   worry   worth   would   wouldn   write   writing   wrong   wysiwyg   Yahoo   years   Yes   yes   yesterday   yet   You   you   Your   your   yours   yourselves   Yuck  

Clear message

Why wiki works

Arguments

See http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks for more.

Different Points of View

Notice though that the owners of this Wiki have chosen to disable the DeletePage feature. This can be interpreted one of two ways:

So that's it - insecure, indiscriminate, user-hostile, slow, and full of difficult, nit-picking people. Any other online community would count each of these strengths as a terrible flaw. Perhaps wiki works because the other online communities don't. --PeterMerel

I think Wiki is weird and prone to sabotage. It presently works, because it's not well known and no one really cares. But try implementing Wiki on a Yahoo-level site--it would be total chaos! (anonymous Wiki opponent)

Your change was 4 minutes old when I saw it. If it had been real sabotage, I would have removed it. -- ThomasWaldmann 2002-03-22 09:56:53

I agree with anonymous, if I wished, I could have deleted this whole page. Perhaps a user base system with logins would make more sense.

With MoinMoin it is ok. Some versions like OpenWiki and Ward's Wiki only keep a couple of recent versions and then recovering stuff is very hard. I am still trying to recover some of the syndicate lists on the former overwritten with spam. You need a pretty plugged in community if you depend on them to recover rapidly-- AndrewCates

If you click on the "info" icon, you can access any old revision of this page. So even wiping a page does no permanent damage as one can easily restore an undamaged older revision. -- ThomasWaldmann 2002-05-12 10:19:54

We use Wiki on an internal site at work that is for documentation - the precise qualities of Wiki make it very well suited for this purpose - it's editable by anyone, at any time, for any reason. There is a revision history of all of the pages in the web. As for the concept of user accountability - we require login to edit, but logins are open to anyone..... - JonStanley

How far back in history can you go with the diff's? Can you set somewhere on MoinMoin how many revisions to keep? -- -- -- DavidCollantes 2002-05-21 10:38:57

Firstly, Wiki is not meant for Yahoo! level sites. It is just for people to put in their thoughts. Somebody wants to delete the whole site, that is his thought. - general_failure

Maybe but the defences at Wikipedia (which is more than one million pages) see to work well on vandalism and spam. Defences against claptrap are another matter --AndrewCates

The shortcomings of Usenet are obvious, and thereby the need for a new collaboration paradigm is equally obvious.. but we still need hierarchal-like organization (or perhaps something better?), and rather than the ridiculous prospect that any idiot can come by and destroy stuff for kicks (be it reversible or not) what is needed is a simple authentication method, not blocking IP?s or Browsers, but user accounts, and if the user has the motivation necessary to create a new account so that s/he can destroy something again, then s/he?ll be blocked again. What?s important is that the process cannot be automated; people who get their kicks from doing stupid crap like that wouldn?t think it was fun if they had to come-up with a new username/password every time they did it.

I guess a constant supervising is very needed in any Wiki site... If not, I think a Wiki site would kill itself pretty easily... Brrrrrlbllb.... I don't know..... - ceefour

I think that the Wiki is a good forum and given the way in which the page is changed, people are inclined to change it in ways that are non-destructive -Jason

"Opponents" to Wiki's always amaze me. It's the greatest example of fear of freedom. "You mean, anyone can do whatever they want!? NO, I'm opposed to it!" Fear of the unknown. Fear that an unsupervised, uncontrolled system can actually work. Fear of loss of control. Reminds me of the cries we are hearing from the RIAA with regard to sharing.

Your note reminds me so much of Monty Python's "Life of Brian":

(Brian)-"You are all individuals!" 
(crowd)-"We are all individuals!"
(Brian)-"You have to be different!"
(crowd)-"Yes, we are all different!"
(loner)-"I'm not."

(This is my first encounter of Wiki, and within a minutes of reading this page, I edited some grammar, snuck in a couple of winks, and gave the above comment. BTW, found about wiki via the comedi project...) IamSil

Don't forget my favorite... Brian: You have to work it out for yourselves! Crowd: Yes, we have to work it out for ourselves... Tell us more!

They're not saying they're opposed--only that they think such attempts are doomed to failure. I'm fascinated by the concept of anarchism, and the idea of a wiki, but looking at a site like Metababy--an HTML wiki, with a bug that allows one to completely delete pages--gives me pause.

Yuck! I had a look at Metababy, and really regretted the experience. Looks like wiki could become just another way for sickos to get their kicks.

Wasn't it de Tocqueville who said something like, "America is great because its people are good. If its people cease to be good, it will cease to be great"? A community prospers or fails by the acts of its constituents. If a wiki can be sabotaged by one bad actor, what chance can it have?

A Deliberate Sabotage

This page deliberately sabotaged... with the best of intentions.

On the original version of the page an opponent of Wiki claimed if I wished I could have deleted this whole page. However Wikis survive such things because, I suppose, people who care about a page restore them. Since there are old established Wikis out there, and they dont get trashed, I assume it works.

So I have deleted the whole of the WhyWikiWorks page and replaced it with this test. My guess is that the old page will be restored reasonably promptly. If not I will restore the old page myself in a day or two. Either way I will report on whether the test worked.

NickHollingsworth 08 Jul 2002.

I have restored the original content of this page on the same day on which it was sabotaged. I had never used a Wiki before, I was just curious about this concept and wanted to know WhyWikiWorks. The challenge above immediately made me want to prove that such a sabotage would not succeed. I quickly learned how to view a diff and how to restore the page's previous content. However, I do not know how I would have reacted had I been confronted with a real, malicious sabotage. Perhaps I would not have looked further into Wiki, convinced on my first visit that it does not work.

FelixBreuer 08 Jul 2002

A different result from the one that I expected! I had noticed that at least one person was subscribed to the page and thought they would see the change and replace the original. Instead a passerby replaces it. Same outcome I guess; and a lot sooner than I was expecting.

NickHollingsworth 08 Jul 2002.

Wiki's strength is just an issue of balance. The balance of good and bad. Currently, the bad ones are too few to constantly destroy the things built by the good ones. Hence, as long as the good ones represent the majority of the population Wikis will live. A Wiki turns the balance towards the constructive people, giving them the means to overcome the destructive people by sheer speed of the reconstruction of torn down infra- structure. - dat.r0x@gmx.net 15 Sep 2002 (It's just like Star Wars except with Jedi Gnomes.)

Destructive actions against a wiki are like kids with spraycans tagging your fence. They get the most reward if the tag stays there a while. If you clean it the very next day, they are less likely to bother doing it again. While this psycology protects a wiki from individuals and small groups, there is the possibility that large gangs could take turns keeping a site in disrepait - but its the sort of thing that once you've got you kicks it could easily turn boring. However, a wiki is probably best for consensus information. Running one as a minority on a generally unpoplular topic would be lot harder. --Ben Coman, Perth Western Australia, 16 Sept 2004 - hey, it seems this comment is exactly two years after the one below. Another strength of wiki?

I like Wikis because they remind me of Hypercard. I have a personal wiki running on my Laptop, and a Group Wiki on our Intranet, and there are even Open Wikis like this one. All in all they can be quite useful - and who said that you can replace everything else with it??? -- HeyHey 16 Sept 2002

Talking about hypercard and information organization, I wanted to add - I used to use a program called "info-select" for managing my information. It had a very convenient interface. But it was always a pain in the ass to share.

Since moving over to Linux, I started using Jedit. Now that's my information organization program - I just arrange things in files and use jedit's searching facilities and macros/shortcuts/plugins to find the info I need.

I also started writing Docbook. Jedit and Docbook both have moin pages. And the real cool synergy comes from a couple of places - first, the ability edit pages directly inside Jedit thanks to the moinmoin plugin. Very cool. I just started running my own moin and I am kicking myself for not doing it sooner! The possibilities for information organization and sharing are endless.

But now, I'm using moin to plugin non-editable content. I have a book I am writing which I plan to publish. I want to make the content available inside the wiki and allow people to make comments. I embedded the generated HTML from a docbook inside a moin page by writing just a few lines of python code in a macro. You can add comments below the macro, but you can't touch the book.

Moin is not just editable pages - it's an OO framework for building webapps too. Very flexible if you know python.

--AlanEzust 2004-07-24

I like Wikis too, even though I heard about it yesterday for the first time - but what about the dangers? Anybody who reaches this site could change my ((and your) and yours too!) texts, nobody can be sure if he/she(or it!) wouldn?t be traduced by changing his/her text, for example into something racist...

I think I wouldn?t start up my own public Wiki, but I think I?ll visit some Wikis in the future. Greetz from Berlin/Germany -- Oli 16 Sept 2002

Well, I am just a day old in wiki .. I dont think there are too many people who really want to sabotage this concept .. after all we live in a free world with all kinds of people around .. look at our sysadmin .. there is always a good for bad .. tit for tat kind of thing .. if someone deletes this page , he would restore it and the sabotage will be unsuccessful .. long live wiki =)

I am completely fascinated by the Wiki... B-)

I love Wiki, but one thing that has struck my mind: what if someone decides to edit the front page and insert some horribly gross illegal porn picture or whatever? Sure, it will be deleted as soon as someone comes along, but in the case of a smaller Wiki, this can be hours, and during those hours random people can come by and visit, be offended and never visit that site again. I think the answer this though: If the Wiki is big, it will be removed within seconds/minutes; if the wiki is small, sabotagers will not care. Or something. --SimonK?gedal

Yes. It can take some hours if you have a very small, not often visited wiki. But then it won't be seen by many users anyway (it is not often visited ;) ). If you have a well-known wiki that is often visited, it will only last some minutes and won't be seen by much people, too. So it is a bit annoying but not a big problem anyway. You also may put the FrontPage into read-only mode, because that page needs not to be changed often, but is the most inviting one for various idiots doing dumb stuff. -- ThomasWaldmann 2002-12-01 11:44:15

why bother?

This wiki thingy is absolutely incredible. Totally configurable, conveniently editable, and completely based on the honor system. It's an intr-a-net's best friend.

= LONG LIVE WIKI = -- JimmyMiller 2003-01-06 17:03:00 .

Thoroughly confused by WikiWikiWeb stuff. Very haphazard navigation, no centralised focal point. No wonder it works so well. It's like some kind of nerdish cult. Only smart types will get involved and so you don't get the people who want to sabotage it. However, the integrity of what people say can be questioned. Someone could just as easily come in here and edit my words,***oooh I almost did, but I think I'll settle for a deranged digression: really, maybe the wiki just challenges the ego concept of words. I mean, they certainly aren't mine anymore, now that they are yours (or yours). This wiki stuff rocks. Now back to your regularly scheduled broadcast (now was that so bad? and really, how much of what we (i you) say and write is really holy enough to worry to much that it might get edited or even mangled?)*** negate my statements with a single word and I'll be none the wiser. I couldn't be bothered to put back what had been erased or ruined. I'd just leave it and do something else. Perhaps I would eat beef stroganoff. Perhaps I would take up the trombone. Perhaps I would write that single word on a single sheet of paper, take the paper out into a green field alone, and contemplate the idea of the internet. Perhaps I did not even write this sentence, or paragraph, but then... who or what am "I" after all, in a place such as this?

Tried just this sort of thing at school with a wordpad file left open on the screen. People just added stuff to it all day. Then the saboteurs entered and started paki-bashing a friend of mine so they took it off. Didn't work.

Make it easier, make it auditable, give it some integrity. Nice idea needs more work.

Wiki relies on the users or 'passers-by' it works great in websites with numerous users however on small 'never heard of' sites it would not work. But still on Yahoo! howeaver it would not work either because everybody would think someone else would do it. Wiki works well where the conditions are good but perishes where the conditions are bad.

MauriceAlbert

P.S I just think Wiki is amazing, how it secures itself while being so open.

Not stated among the arguments for and against wiki is the obvious: that you can easily secure wiki behind an intranet, and that is where wiki excels, among a contained, gated community, where trust is implicit and granted on the basis of all individuals being known to the community. There are secured wikis on the Net as well. They don't provide complete security against vandalism, yet the rollback and versioning/difference capabilities of some of these wikis is reason enough to pay attention to wiki as an important collaborative content tool.

DavidMattison, 2003-05-20

I just installed moin^2 yesterday on our company intranet server (debian) and already people are using it. Needless to say, they're all technically minded so they know how to behave. I must say, I'm just blown away with the idea, although I have been wanting to look at wikis for ages. It just never occured to me that anyone could edit the pages, so I never got the idea of wiki-communities. It's great, I love it, and now maybe I'll have to work some :-).

AleksandrKoltsoff, 2003-05-28

Fascinating...I'd heard of Wiki on and off but was too busy to investigate. Looking up the Aqsis renderer's online docs, I got a link to here. I'm intrigued. Re. Wordpad, above, I submit that part of the problem may be that Wordpad is too non-geeky. The prevailing view here seems to be that geeks make Wiki work, and Wordpad is...well, certainly not geeky. (I'll refrain from digging out more general Microsoft comments. *grin*)

Anyway, take care and I hope that the humming bird gets better!

Richard I-don't-have-my-own-Wiki-page Rauch, 20030718

Sabotage by deletion is easily fixed. A truly perverse individual, however, would engage in far more subtle forms of damage, such as mangling text in ways that is not immediately obvious, especially to a user that is already familiar with the page and skipping directly to content that appears new. A vandal could post an edit that couples an insightful comment with the introduction of random typos and word deletions or insertions that degrades the quality of the page without destroying it. (Such behavior could even be automated.) By the time such damage is typically discovered, it will be intermixed with a series of valid changes to the page, making fixing things into a painful merge rather than a simple rollback.

While the level of individual with the time and dedication to do such, coupled with the sociopathic instinct to destroy things others enjoy, is a fairly rare occurrence, the internet age has taught us that such pathological individuals do exist, and that they can affect computers anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to protect a wiki from such saboteurs without severely curtailing its usability to the people for which it is there in the first place. It's the old conflict between freedom and security...

-- Mapache 2003-09-28

My solution for this problem is to set a e-mail mark to all pages that are important to me. So I get informed if someone changes the page and I can react properly. I did so with a wiki I created for my class and it works fine. -- 1st-angel 2003-10-07 14:57:30

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.

Today I encountered my first wiki sabotage in the form of a hentai link randomly added to the content of the page so I had simply went in and manually deleted it approximately 20 hours after the fact from what the recent change stated. After using Wikipedia.org for a while now I had come to appreciate the work people put into sharing information and to see even a random link inserted motivated me to do something about it, and I did. I'm considering reverting the pages back to pre-hentai link when I figure how to do so, but this seemingly simple event has convinced me that Wiki does work as long as there are people who desire helpful information and know that they're allowed to "Fix" things.

-- random web surfer who was looking for WRT54G information. 2004-08-21

Why Wikis Don't Work as Well as We Think They Do

Having installed two wiki's (one for work, one for a class), I believe there are some usability issues that prevent them from fulfilling their promise. Assume that most people are not going to invest 20 minutes or more of their time to understand formatting unless there's a big payoff for them. I offer this in the hopes that we can all think about how to solve these problems:

1) People don't use wiki's because they don't realize they can actually make changes. I've found that most of my wiki's audience (participants?) bring a broadcast mindset to anything on the web. The idea that they can make changes is totally foreign to them and they're anxious at first when it comes to "talking back." "Sandboxes" don't seem to be sufficient to get people over the hump. We need something else...

2) Strangely enough, the "free-form" aspect of wiki isn't free form enough. There's no way to easily create columns. I looked at wiki's originally as a way of blogging. Most blogs are two or three columns, but only one column could be powered by a wiki, the others I had to do in HTML. I wish I didn't have to make this compromise. Maybe columns isn't the answer, maybe tables are because that's really what columns are made out of in HTML...

I work in an ad agency and we deal in short attention spans. We need to design better ways to accommodate these short attention spans at the initial stage of using a wiki. Once people see the benefit, then they will invest the time into using them.

-- Joel Greenberg 10/20/03

In regards to point number 2, you may want to check out SnipSnap. It's a combination of a Weblog (with columns) and a Wiki.

-- Richard Terry 1/8/2003

With regards to point number 1, no. People will invest incredible amounts of time learning all kinds of things - um, video recorders spring to mind! - as long as they think there is some benefit (however imaginary). So people who don't want to learn how to use wiki are those who see no benefit (and would probably not contribute anyway - no loss). -- MeDerek 1 May 2004

For point number 2, there is now a macro in the MacroMarket called Columns. It's not fully automatic, but close enough.

-- AnttiKuntsi 2004-06-14

I have a VERY short attention span. How short? This short - (putter about, do other things, come back - oh yes!). And this looks like a lot of fun for doing short stories,poetry and goofiness! --Bruce Griffis

I find that the biggest problem with Wiki's is when people think they can use them as a solution for documentation, and it leaves you with an unusable, not up-to-date mess.

That's not a problem of wiki, but just whether you have people writing good content or not. With wiki you CAN have MORE people doing that, doing that TOGETHER even. But if you still end up with nobody doing it, you would have the same problem without a wiki, too. -- ThomasWaldmann 2004-03-23 19:53:49

The only real moderation problem with a wiki is when you encounter viewpoint war's sometimes. And in that case, there is something like the not-yet-developed ViewPoint to deal with that or the system that wikipedia.org came up with. That and subtle stalking is the only real things that I can think of. The rest is counteracted by the balancing nature of wiki's and the fact that there are more reasonable people than trolls. The fact that everyone can be a moderator can really help with trolling. --MahyarMcDonald (02/04/04)

Viewpoint wars are fun, because both participants are always wrong. Only "I" am right.

This page is no longer usable because the signal to noise ratio is too small. The problem with a room full of brilliant people constructively engaged about meaninful things is that no one can hear anything over the racket.

Huh!? I read the whole page, getting a lot out of *all* the different viewpoints, much like a slashdot discussion, without the ratings and threads (both of which I like, actually). Well, some folks can't deal with the chaos I guess, and any kind of human interaction tends to be chaotic. In contrast, refined, controlled discussions can also be boring. Slashdot-like systems leverage the chaos and impose just enough organization to avoid breakdown. It could be that wikis need some of the same control mechanisms to really work well on a larger scale.

How to sabotage this system

Look for opinions. Oppose them. Generate controversy, especially heated debate over ambiguous subjects. This will raise the level of noise and frustration, driving people away.

Look for facts. Distort them. Replacing complicated data with slight changes can be detected, but only if a person is willing to pour over it and validate it. A difference engine and source control help when source material is changed in a complex, subtle ways. But enough accumulated errors cause a failure of trust.

And never forget; if you can set this page to something, someone else can set it to something else. Last in wins.

See?

I just visited WP:HEP and found it sabotaged, pressed edit, and it loaded an already reverted version. Speaks volumes, i guess.

WhyWikiWorks (last modified 2007-04-01 02:20:36)