[Web4lib] wikis in libraries

[K.G. Schneider]

> I'm going to have to side with John here.  Wiki's are interesting tools,
> but there really isn't any great reason to use a wiki for FAQ's or
> policy pages unless you want to let users write your FAQ's and policies
> for you. ...

"Wiki" is not a synonym for a website anyone can edit; most support levels
of permissions.

For the most part I've agreed with the people on this thread who said the
original post sounded like a solution in need of a problem. But a wiki that
is open to a limited community, such as a library team, can be valuable for
a number of purposes, from subject guides to policies, procedures, style
manuals, FAQs, etc. In fact a wiki is a good format for procedures and
policies because you can track history and discussion; and most wikis
support RSS feeds that make it easy to track when a wiki has been updated.
(This does make me wonder whether in Mediawiki history and discussion pages
can be suppressed for some communities.)

My main beef with wikis is that they are not quite as easy to edit as they
should be. They generally require learning a localized command language. It
may not be a complex command language, but it's one more thing to learn.
Compare with your typical blog, which is very easy to compose content in.  

I also suspect the libraries that have moved to blog-managed websites from
"a simple web page that's laid out correctly with CSS-styled definition
lists or unordered lists" have traveled a route from funneling all changes
through one person to distributing the work in ways that are ultimately
"simpler" than centralized control (and again, some blogs, such as Wordpress
and Movable Type, support levels of permissions). 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com