This is semi-off topic, but semi-on topic; I hope this is ok to post. This was partly sparked by Meredith telling me that you all previously worked on James and John, and me thinking how great it would be if there were an organized page on those posts, rather than having to page through the archives.
My question: I'm wondering whether anyone is interested in starting or working on some sort of Quaker wiki. I'm assuming everyone is somewhat familiar with wikis.
Below I've written some things I think one could be used for. I actually have already gotten one set up here on a free wiki-hosting site; the question is whether it'd be best to use that one (currently it's pretty much empty of any content), or start a different one. I can give my take on the pros and cons if people are interested.
Possible uses it could have for this blog:
· An easy way to collaboratively create a detailed catalog of/guide to our 400+ posts
· A way to perhaps collaboratively work on an entry before posting it — either altogether, or in spontaneously arranged groups (like "Hey Zach let's co-write an entry on logion 104"). This would probably be an efficient way to develop long, detailed posts if anyone had an inkling in that direction.
Possible uses for the Quaker blogosphere in general:
· Other people could easily create similar catalogs of their posts.
· People involved in other communal blogs, like the communal blog on early Quaker texts and history I'd like to start sometime, could in the same way develop entries collaboratively before posting.
· Recurring themes in different blogs could have pages on the wiki with links to the various blog postings, rather than people having to pore through various blog archives to find posts they feel are important. Like, there could be a page called Plain dress which could include links to the many blog entries on that subject (and relieve Martin of the duty of having to keep up with them all by himself).
And (sorry to keep going on!) a few possible uses for Friends in general:
· More detailed information about things that aren't encyclopedic enough to be in Wikipedia
· A ridiculously simple way for local, regional, (and even yearly) meetings to create and update home pages. Right now, most meetings either have no webpage, or ones that are hard to find and/or not very attractive. Example: this page on my monthly meeting took about ten minutes to create, is easy for anyone in my meeting to update, and couldn't exist on Wikipedia.
(Hopefully you can see that although Wikipedia, the biggest wiki, is an encyclopedia, not all wikis have to be in that genre. For example, there is an Orthodox Christian wiki, which I think is a great idea, but I think they may be limiting themselves by being a wiki-encyclopedia on Orthodoxy, rather than a multi-purpose wiki for and about Orthodox Christianity. So I'm not just proposing a Quaker encyclopedia wiki, but a wiki that could be used for a huge number of Quaker related things, encyclopedic and not.)
What do you think?
9 comments:
Hi Zach,
I appreciate all the thought and prep you put into this idea. I agree that there may be a better format for a discussion such as this. I looked up wikis, including the one you set up, and truthfully, I am not inspired visually by the organization of wikis. Too busy, too much advertisement, too ugly or something. (Gee, I don't know you very well...I hope this doesn't make you cry...)
However, I participate in an online forum, a phpbb community: http://www.easilyamazed.com/bb/
(sorry, I still haven't learned to do html tags)
host web site is: http://www.phpbb.com/
I have really enjoyed the format of this forum, and although I don't have direct experienced with any other fourm options I know others exist out there as well.
I think a forum of this style would work well for our purposes. We could still have members, but visitors could also post comments. Each new scripture discussed could be posted as a topic, under the main heading of which Gospel it is in. Others can post comments to your post, just as we do now. And as well, we could have a section for general musings, such as Marjorie's post below.
The only thing I'm not sure of is how others would happen by to the discussions. It looks like an invitation kind of thing. Maybe this is true of Wikis, too?
Anyway - food for thought. Again, thanks Zach for bringing up this idea. I, for one, am open to change, especially when I see the benefits. And I think the benefit here could be better dialogue access and ongoing discussions for those who are interested, that one could return to at any time.
Thank you, Zach!
I belong to a bbs kind of forum also and I like that format that is used ... you can see what one of the many forums they have looks like here
I'm currently in web-obligation reduction mode and so my sense of creativity web-wise is low.
I think if others here want to get into this stuff -- great. Otherwise -- remind about this idea again in January when I'll be more open to the exploration.
Zach, you said, "This would probably be an efficient way to develop long, detailed posts if anyone had an inkling in that direction."
Frankly I'm not into long, detailed posts. Go for it if that's you cup of tea.
Thanks for the feedback everyone.
Meredith (no worries, not crying :) -- I feel like a forum would in some ways be a good thing, but the disadvantage is that it's difficult to edit, or transport into some other medium... one can add comments to a thread, but it's hard to change the order of comments, refactor similar comments into one, edit comments themselves (especially by other people)... which is precisely the strength of wikis.
You are right about the generally unappealling visual nature of most wikis though, and the ads are definitely a huge downside to free wiki hosting... I don't currently have the skills to get under the hood and make one look good.
I'll keep thinking about this. I may at some point organize some entries like I suggested and post a link to see what you all think.
That would be great Zach.
Just for clarification - why would it be important to:
*edit a comment
*transport it to another medium *change the order of the comments
*refactor similar comments into one
*or edit comments of others?
Well, in general, more flexibility is better than less.
More specifically, if, say, there was a thread about Thomas, and each comment was about a different logion, what if one day someone revisted a logion we had already talked about? On a wiki you could put the links to those two discussions in the same place, but with a forum, one comment (about the first time we looked at that logion) would be in one place and the second one somewhere else.
Sounds like a fine idea. One concern I would have would be that some members and attenders of a meeting might not have any facility or comfort with computers (or with writing, or with graphic development), and their contributions might be left out. In writing a minute in a face-to-face meeting this is handled, I think, by a recording secretary going over the wording until everybody present is satisfied, and -- this is key -- the meeting has the sense of being guided by the spirit. How does one gain a sense of being guided by the spirit in the disembodied, asynchronous medium of the Internet?
I see a Quaker wiki as a way to record and to pass on information that will never make its way into a Faith and Practice, but which is reinvented 500 times in 500 meetings. Here are some examples:
A long time ago, someone demonstrated how to set many finger paint pots into a single plaster cast so that they were far harder to tip over.
Those weekly timers can save your meeting hundreds of fuel dollars IF you preheat properly when meetings are going to be held and IF committee clerks are prompt in telling the heat person about meetings and IF you watch out for mold growth and pipes freezing.
Ministry and Counsel committees should ALWAYS contact the victim(s) of any abuse, political chicanery or slight among meeting members. The victims feel doubly slighted if you don't, and they stay angry for decades even if they don't leave the meeting.
If a Friend is chemically sensitive and looks sick, it may be something in the meetinghouse's air, such as someone else's perfume. Get the victim to fresher air immediately.
This kind of informations should be passed on and retained as if in a journal. Friends Journal is limited in its scope. F&P will never cover it.
A wiki is the tool for such sharing. A wiki isn't exactly consensus process, but it's close. We need close when we're working in the area of quick continual revelation and in changing-a-lightbulb problems.
--Paul Klinkman
p s y c h w a r e (aa tt) y ah oo (dd oo tt) c 0m
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