Wiki Thoughts

Wikis - another great collaboration tool.  I haven't had much experience with wikis yet. Our 23 Things team set up a wiki (well, Becky set it up, and the rest of us merely contributed), and that was probably my first real experience using a wiki in a purposeful way.  I think it was June 2010 that I took the basic training offered by Campus ITS - certainly a useful introduction.

It seems to me that wikis, blogs, and docs have a lot of the same benefits and functionalities.  I think the challenge comes in knowing which tool to choose.  Probably the greatest drawback of a wiki is the ability to overwrite changes others have made, as some of the 23Thingers have already experienced.  So it's likely not the best tool for synchronous editing.  Wikis do, however, keep a good history of revisions.  (But then again Google docs also keeps a history of revisions and is better for synchronous editing.)  Obviously, you would want to use something like Google docs if you needed to actually create some sort of document.  But in terms of sharing and collaboration purposes, blogs, wikis and docs have a lot of similarities.  Maybe some blogging software offers more interesting and dynamic templates than wiki software, so it might be fun to use a blog if you have a fairly small group.  Another advantage for wikis, on the other hand, is that they can be opened up for anonymous editing and commenting, probably more so than most blogging tools.

I tried adding the RSS feed for the 23 Things Wiki to my Google Reader (using the Feed Builder), but either I was doing something wrong, or it wasn't working.  Maybe someone can shed some further light on this for me.  I'll have to try again another time.