This is an interesting concept for producing an online encyclopedia. Anyone can use a wilki to find information simply by editing. The syntax is very user friendly - it’s that big a thing now that anyone has the ability to update sites and add information that will benefit online communities in trying to find information relating to various things.
Wilkis differ from traditional writing activities in that you don’t have to write a lot about a subject - if a link is created most of the time the wilki will be able to give the user some feedback on the link. Within wilkis it is more reference orientated than anything the purpose of them is to gain and learn more information through the internet.
Having read the article on wilkis I feel a lot more enlightened about their purpose than what I first did. They do not like random people feeding in irrelevant information - rather graffitiing the site with useless information. The wilki site is trying to promote a community that will only allow particular things to be posted and edited and which is being overrun by adminstrators who have the authority to block particular users if they are not putting what they feel is appropriate to the site in a whole. Instead letting people use the site as a public good they are decideing what should go into within their own merits.
Since reading this article I now have a mixed response to wilkis. Before I read this I was all for them - I believed they had a social benefit that everyone could benefit from them but now I feel they are being dictated by people in authority who make choice as whether to disregard them or not. I think in order for this mechanism, which I feel is an excellent and most useful one, to develop further certain allowances must be made otherwise it will not benefit people at all.
My response tells me basically that although I do enjoy writing it would be made a lot easier if I could reference particular issues in the form of Wilkis- it would save a lot more time and would surely benefit other readers who wanted to gain more information from my disscussions.
Simon Andrews