The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Wikis are a way of putting your knowledge together with other people no matter where they live around the world. A wiki is a simple type of webpage that can be edited by anyone as long as they have the password for the site. Using a wiki, you can post information, pictures, or make plans with a group of people. For example, let's say you are setting up a family reunion with people from other places. Heading to a site like pbwiki.com, you can set up an empty site in under two minutes and then add whatever information you might have. It is as easy as using a word processor. But the beauty of wikis is that other people who are involved in planning can log onto the same site, make changes, suggestions to the plans, or add other events for the weekend. Then the next time you go the site their ideas will be there for you to see and edit. Wikis have been around for a few years, but this year has seen an explosion of places online offering wiki sites for free. Two of the best are wikispaces and pbwiki, although you may want to look at jotspot and seedwiki as well. All of these sites pay for themselves through advertising, so expect a few small ads, but you also have the option of paying a fee to rid yourself of them. If you are thinking of starting a wiki, check the site for the number of subscribers the wiki supports, the number of pages you can have, and most importantly, how much total space the wiki can be. As soon as you start to upload pictures, it will chew up your allotted amount of space quite fast, so this is especially important. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia. A huge, sprawling, multi-lingual, free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is worth spending some time looking through. The advantage of a resource like this being produced on a wiki is that the entries can be constantly updated as new things happen and new information on a topic shows up. Of course, this can also be the main downfall of a wiki, as some of the more controversial topics, such as the biographies of Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush, are vandalized quite often as people want to make their political opinions clear. In a study conducted through the winter, it was found that Wikipedia's entries carry the same number of errors, on average, as Encyclopedia Britannica, so the quality is quite high even though the entries are written by interested amateurs. Last week, in response to concerns about drive-by vandalism happening repeatedly on some entries, Wikipedia has started requiring people to sign into an account, and pass through a waiting period before they are allowed editing access to certain entries. With thousands of people signed into Wikipedia around the clock, articles are constantly being updated, checked for facts, and edited for spelling and grammar. Using a tool like Mozilla Wiki is interesting because you can watch as articles on Wikipedia are edited. If you create an account at Mozilla Wiki, you can set up a sidebar in your browser that lets you track up to 1,000 articles for three days at a time, watching the changes that occur as articles develop. This is especially interesting if you choose articles of current events such as natural disasters, because you can get the most current, updated information on the story. Powerful, free and collaborative, wikis are tools worth learning how to use. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
