#16 Wikis

This exercise gives some good examples of how wikis are used as a collaborative tool to pool knowledge. Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki is a fine example of coperation across the library profession allowing experiences from different libraries to be recorded and shared in one place. St. Joseph County Public Library's Subject Guides as stated in the libary 2.0 blog is a fine model of how subject guides can be contructed from within the one institution. As with most exmples on the web these lean heavily on American experiences. Using Wikis to Create Online Communities also gives examples of library catalogs where wiki type functionality allow added information to be added (eg Open WorldCat). Amazon, of course, also provides such functions.

The drawbacks of wikis are well known. They can be attacked by malicious people or spammed. Entries can be manipulated, as was seen just prior to the 2007 Australian Federal Election campaign when staffers from PM John Howards office changed entries on wikipedia to tell more favourable versions of "The Children Overboard Affair" and other pages relating to treasuer Costello were changed.

In general though, as bloggers, owners of bulletin boards and the such like have discovered, such public platforms need to be moderated, edited or have some sort of overseeing authority, otherwise they descend into chaos at the best and at the worst online wars between particpants. As long as the rules and procedures for modrating are made transparent I see this gatekeeper function as being essential.