WEB101 - Learning Portfolio, Week 6 - Wikis

Another slow start - thankfully kids are back to school today and I can start catching up!

This week (OK, last week) we covered Wikis, mostly Wikipedia but also some others. I got tragically sidetracked on this topic and ended up spending way too much time clicking on links and wandering off the track! My overriding view of Wikis after today's study is - they can be a great resource but potentially also a complete time-waster!

One of the activities we were asked to do was to edit a Wikipedia page, so I chose my suburb, Ivanhoe, and made a couple of minor changes to it. I've only just done this so I'll keep an eye on it over the next week.

I was nervous when doing this! I've got a fair bit of stuff online but it's now occurred to me that everything I've ever done has been creating or editing my own stuff - I don't think I've ever deliberately changed something somebody else has done, unless it's content for a website I'm developing and then I would advise the client why we should change it. The more I've thought about it, the more I've realised - I don't have a fundamental problem with actually participating - I'm just nervous about being wrong, and being publicly smacked on the hand for it (that would be my "perfectionist" streak)! So there's a slight amount of breath-holding going on at the moment while I wait to see if I get "reversed".

The other interesting site we looked at was Wikia.com, which is a whole website of Wikis (and where I got sidetracked). I spent a bit of time on Wookiepedia (I can't believe people have that much to say about Star Wars!) and the Recipes Wiki, but then I found the Heroes Wiki and realised I've already read a lot of it! It just never occurred to me that it was part of an entire site full of Wikis. NOW I've got a bigger problem because I've just found the FlashForward Wiki, so it could be several hours until I start THIS week's work!