A5YorkCilke

A5YorkCilke

To Do

• please work as a group (minimum: 2 members; max: 6 members) and submit one answer as a group (clearly identifying the members of your group)

Task 1

Wikis fall into this category. Compare Wikis as meta-design environments with another meta-design environment of your choice for which user-generated content is the defining feature.

Task 2

Analyze in detail the following two Wikis:

• the Wiki used for our course with which you are (or at least should be) very familiar http://ngw.cs.colorado.edu/
• the Wiki for the research community in "Creativity and Information Technology" at: http://swiki.cs.colorado.edu:3232/CreativeIT

Group response

1. Members of the Group

Dain Cilke, Ian York

2. Task 1

Wiki's are a great meta-design environment. They allow anybody to contribute and regulate information passing through the site. Wiki's can be a reliable source of information and a great way for an entire community to share information and thoughts. However, it does have its limitations. Wiki's are inherently visual based and designed primarily for human readability. They do a great job of sharing text and images but fail when it comes to sharing code. If you have a dozen programmers working on the same project, each with their own sub assignment, the distribution and merging of code becomes a complex task. Especially when contributors are not fully know such as in an open source environment. This is where a code repository system like Subversion (svn) becomes handy. svn is usefully in keeping track of changes to the code, merging the code between individual developers sandboxes and sharing code. The tracking and reconciliation of versions, potential clashes, and various branches reflects the strict change management needed for complex programs and emphasizes the machine readable nature of the information. Code repositories also help bring new contributors quickly up to speed on a project by providing easy access to the latest version of a project, as well as tracking past progress and competing branches.

Task 2

The class wiki and the CreativeIT wiki are great examples of wikis that facilitate an interaction with a specific set of information. The class wiki accomplishes its' (basic?) goal of getting information about CSCI 3002/7000, such as assignments and homework, to students. The CreativeIT wiki gives an easily searchable database on everything related to the CreativeIT project. However, like every wiki, the uniqueness of the wiki can be its greatest flaw. When you first approach a wiki, it takes a while to figure out the small details and idiosyncrasies. For instance, on the class wiki, finding a list of everybody enrolled in the class took a couple of minutes of searching. I assumed (wrongly) that the class roster would be located under the course tools heading. This made me appreciate how the CreativeIT wiki was laid out. A simple, quick link list on the right side of the screen. This helped cut down on how long you were searching for a particular link and gave the page on a whole a cleaner look. However, I found the color scheme of the CreativeIT wiki particularly annoying. Blue links on a yellow background is a surefire way of giving someone a headache. Also, the CreativeIT wiki would look a lot cleaner if the links were not underlined, but possibly replaced with a simple font color change.

Overall, both wikis could benefit by increasing the flexibility of the displays and content via:

Separate content from design: The ability to select design options that are layered over the same information allows individuals to use the site in a manner that is pleasant and productive to them. (Try the design options on the right of ZenGarden to see how design can be applied dynamically to content - http://www.csszengarden.com/)

Reorganizing the side bars into clearly distinguished categories and allow individuals to customize the modules shown. Currently the course site has mixed together the Course Items (Tools, Pages), Personal Items (Recently Visited), Activity Tools (Recent Modifications, Activity Graph), and global wiki updates (Members List) without any cues as to the scope or category of the information. Clustering these items by category and allowing individuals to selectively display from a number of optional modules helps individuals highlight areas of interest. (See iGoogle for great example of opt-in modular design with flexible layouts - http://www.google.com/ig)

Encourage interactions via the wiki: The addition of a threaded discussion board would be useful to our course wiki to help encourage outside-the-classroom interactions via the individuals starting discussions and tracking responses via rss or email. While some of us have read contributions from many others and sometimes left comments, this does not spark any real discussion as the authors may not be aware of these updates. Also threads help organize the inevitable, and often useful, tangents, sidebars, and sub-discussions that are associated with a vibrant debate.