Thing 10

Point of etiquette: does one place an edit at the beginning or at the end of the page? In the case of an actual wiki article, one assumes there would be a logical organizational outline that would dictate exactly where one would stick in one's oar, as it were. In this case, Miss Shelved has to agree with MysteryLvr (SEE above) that this particular page is less a wiki than a practice page with no real organization to the contributor's comments.

As to the utility of wikis in general, there are situations in which the sharing of knowledge among peers and/or practitioners is pure gold: educational best practices, etymological research, folklore, pop culture, technological troubleshooting, for example. In other cases, say medical research, one might need to be rather more careful in checking the antecedents of shared information. Wikipedia, one gathers, relies on a dedicated cadre of self-appointed citizen editors who work arond the clock to keep the site cleared of misinformation, at least some of which is supplied by well-meaning librarians (a few well-known to Miss Shelved!) who plant articles to prove to their students the unreliability of the source. As in any social network, the key is getting a quorum of authentic contributors and keeping the riff-raff out. (Miss Shelved 7-16-08)

NOTE: This is the edit added to the 23 Things Wiki page