[Web4lib] wikis in libraries

[Lars Aronsson]

Tom Keays wrote:

> Here are a few outstanding examples:
> "Confluence is the enterprise wiki designed to make it easy for you

All over your examples I read "designed to..." but to what degree 
have they actually been successful in involving more than an 
elite in active wiki collaboration?

In any given population, what is the largest percentage that 
anybody has been able to convert to active wiki contributors? We 
know that literacy can reach 98 or 99 percent.  The businessmen's 
club in my region complained (now in 2006) they could only reach 
80 percent of their members by e-mail.  They don't know how to 
convince the remaining 20 percent to use e-mail, so they still 
have to send out information in envelopes.  This includes 55-year 
old plumbers in rural areas, and the club sees this as a failure. 
On the other hand, something like 98 percent have cell phones. Is 
it possible in any population to reach more than 5 percent wiki 
fluency?  How much of a difference does WYSIWYG really do?

Talking of elites, the Swedish society of encyclopedia collectors 
now has five members and they aim to become nine, which would be 
one for each million inhabitants.  I don't know if I would qualify 
as the sixth member.  I only have a dozen encyclopedias or so.  
The current members have more than 200 encyclopedias each.  There 
are some nice pictures if you click "5 bilder" at 
http://www.corren.se/archive/2006/10/15/iwkjr9vgl8nwjmz.xml


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se