Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Wikis (was Research database?)

[Becky Weaver (beckyweaver]

Interesting thoughts from Ken and Eris. It strikes me that the difference 
determining the optimum choice of wiki (Wikipedia vs. a home-grown 
community-specific wiki) is the difference between community-specific and 
non-community-specific information.
   
  Any research or knowledge compliation that would be of benefit to 
non-community-specific applications - permaculture, maybe, or decision-making - 
can find a home on Wikipedia as well as anywhere else. It may even already be 
there!  
   
  Whereas stuff specific to your community - policies, meeting minutes, phone 
lists -probably ought to live on your own wiki with links, if appropriate, to 
Wikipedia entries. 
   
  My impression is the type of information Anthea's group was trying to 
assemble was more the former than the latter. But once they start talking about 
which applications they think are best for themselves, taking into account 
their budget and the specifics of their own climate, sites, and goals; that 
discussion should probably move to their own community's site. In either case, 
a web-based collaborative application (e.g. wiki) is probably both the easiest 
and most effective way to "pull together scattered references to a variety of 
topics we've got notes on."
   
  I will say that I've found it nice to have our community's wiki open for 
anybody to read. It does mean we have to be careful about what we post to it - 
no sensitive information or discussion of negotiating strategies. But I like 
being able to point anybody to a page of our wiki. I also confess to 
occasionally using Google to find things in there. 
   
  I'm a firm believer that sometimes learning things the hard way really is the 
best way. If I took everybody's cautionary tales to heart I'd never accomplish 
anything. But sometimes it is nice to see what other people have 
done/discovered/decided, and decide for myself which disasters I'm prepared to 
flirt with.  :-)  
   
  Becky Weaver
  Central Austin Cohousing/Kaleidoscope Village 
   
    > 
> Ken and Tree are both half right! Wikipedia is a specific instance of a
> wiki, and Tree is right that our cohousing-specific stuff would get kind
> of lost there. BUT Ken is on the right track, that wikis can be useful
> for organizing cohousing stuff! FrogSong has a wiki-based community
> manual with lot of our policies, committee info, etc. It is
> password-protected so I can't show it to you. But any member can go in
> and edit/update/add info. For more info on
> wikis:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
> 
> ....

Eris,

You bring up a good point, one I didn't address in my previous posts on
this topic.

You say that cohousing stuff would "get lost" on wikipedia. That could
be remedied by the use of bookmarks or by creating a local webpage which
would provide your entire community with the equivalent of bookmarks.