I find Zoho fairly clunky to use. It seems to have terrible trouble applying the font sizes I select - I can rarely get my changes to "stick". And I don't like that, when you "create a subpage", you're not given a chance to choose where the page will fit into the wiki's structure - it's just automatically shoved in wherever you are in the structure, and you have to go back to the site map to move it to where you want (which isn't made clear in any of their help pages).
Also, in the last round of Learning 2.0 experimentation, Zoe invited me to contribute to the desk wiki and we discovered that even though she'd given me "full" editing rights, as the creator of the wiki she had more rights than me (e.g. she could reorganise the structure of the wiki, but the drag and drop reorganisation feature on the site map was disabled at my end).
I'll catch up with RSSing when I get back from my hols...
EDIT: Didn't get a chance to finish this post due to the inevitable pre-holiday rush. What I've been wanting to do add is some comments about the usefulness of wikis in the library sphere. Of course they have obvious drawbacks - their inherent changeability leads to questions around the authority and reliability of their content, and as Gumleaf notes, they are heavily reliant on having a large and/or active community involved for them to remain accurate and up-to-date - but overall I'd much rather have them than not!
Like Oscar, the number of times I use Wikipedia to get me started on AskNow (to find useful links or to get a quick refresher on an obscure topic) more than justifies its usefulness.
I also quite like the idea of YourArchives, The National Archives' (UK) wiki "where people can share their knowledge of archival sources held by The National Archives and by other archives throughout the UK". The combined advice of those experienced with using these complex collections will be incredibly valuable. I also suspect that the level of technical and historical knowledge required to contribute discourages frivolous entries, cutting down the number of errors included. Once again, if I was researching Oscar Wilde and was unable to find anything in the TNA's excellent online research guides about him, I would much rather have a wiki entry (with potentially some errors in it) than nothing at all to start with...
I'll catch up with RSSing when I get back from my hols...
EDIT: Didn't get a chance to finish this post due to the inevitable pre-holiday rush. What I've been wanting to do add is some comments about the usefulness of wikis in the library sphere. Of course they have obvious drawbacks - their inherent changeability leads to questions around the authority and reliability of their content, and as Gumleaf notes, they are heavily reliant on having a large and/or active community involved for them to remain accurate and up-to-date - but overall I'd much rather have them than not!
Like Oscar, the number of times I use Wikipedia to get me started on AskNow (to find useful links or to get a quick refresher on an obscure topic) more than justifies its usefulness.
I also quite like the idea of YourArchives, The National Archives' (UK) wiki "where people can share their knowledge of archival sources held by The National Archives and by other archives throughout the UK". The combined advice of those experienced with using these complex collections will be incredibly valuable. I also suspect that the level of technical and historical knowledge required to contribute discourages frivolous entries, cutting down the number of errors included. Once again, if I was researching Oscar Wilde and was unable to find anything in the TNA's excellent online research guides about him, I would much rather have a wiki entry (with potentially some errors in it) than nothing at all to start with...
2 comments:
Happy holiday!!
Lynette
Hope you have had a grand time in T...
...wherever your holiday was.
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