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A Wiki is Born!
Author: Michael Stovenour - Published Sun 27 of Aug, 2006 11:49 CDT - (22492 Reads)
Welcome to the www.stovenour.net Wiki. This wiki site was brought to life as an experiment in Wikiness, to understand its uses, and where it might be applied to both personal and business oriented communication. Read More to discover what I believe Wiki is all about and how I plan to use it.
Definition: A Wiki is a type of web site, or section of a web site, that allows the website maintainers to quickly edit and post information. After all Wiki is a Hawaiian word for quick. The web site can be completely maintained through the web site pages themselves, without any need for extra software installed on each maintainers computer. Want a definition from a trusted source: What Is Wiki. Finally wikipedia contains the most complete definition that I've found.
A New Culture
Now, along with this important technology has come a rather unique culture. Some would add that Wiki, as applied to web sites, implies that the web site is open for all to edit. Since editing and updating the web site is quick and requires no extra software, any regular person, just like you and I, has the skills necessary to add content. Others would argue that you need to know grammar, know how to spell, understand something about literary style, etc., but I'm living proof that this is not true.
What, you say, anyone can edit the web site? Sounds like anarchy doesn't it? Well, as it turns out, this technology has good and bad applications. I would not suggest that we make all of www.nytimes.com a Wiki. There needs to be some amount of social responsibility applied to news organizations. But, maybe the editorial section could be a Wiki. Another fascinating application of the Wiki method is www.wikipedia.org. This site is effectively an encyclopedia entirely created and updated by the public. In the end most all Wiki sites are not entirely updatable by anyone. Some require a login, but allow anyone with a valid email address to register; some only allow parts of the site to be updated by the public. This is what I call the "range of Wiki philosophy".
I initially plan to create my personal web site using Wiki. This will be for all things related to Michael Stovenour. It will contain some areas that are only updatable by me, some areas that only my friends can update, and some areas that anyone can update. Yes, the full range of Wiki philosophy.
Home Owners Association site
Internal web Site for technical staff at my company
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