wikis

Wikipedia: it's the place you might surreptitiously check to get some very basic information on a topic you know absolutely nothing about so that you can have enough data to research more reliable sources. Wikipedia - information roulette. It MIGHT be right! Good enough to relieve a nagging piece of curiousity, not good enough to use for your research paper, as I find myself anxiously explaining to children in the library quite often.

I see that wikipedia has a built - in understanding of its own limitations. I read an article about the assassination of President Lincoln. The article itself was heavily cited and seemed to be fairly accurate on the surface. However, when I opened the tab on "discussion" I saw that it had at one time been on a list of "history good articles" and then got removed. Some of the information about John Wilkes Booth seems to be disputed, and has not be adaquately cited. Wikipedia states baldly in one place that it does not allow any original research, and in another place insists that ignorance of the rules should not in any way prevent a novice participant from editing an article.

Democracy in information is a messy place - that's one of the problems I am seeing with Twitter, too. At least with Wikipedia, if you post nonsense, somebody else is likely to call it nonsense and edit it. There's even a place where you can see all the revisions an article has gone through - and this is on a fairly serious article!

The discussion page on an article about Julie Andrews led to quite a lively argument about what was and was not appropriate source material for wikipedia.

I then went into Wet Paint and made a little page. I think I was lucky; by choosing a slightly off-kilter set of subtopics, I managed to avoid the subtopic duplication woes some other people had. I found the templates to be potentially intriguing. You can post meeting room schedules and the like.