Assignment5HauckOrinPitts

Assignment5HauckOrinPitts

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

Mason Hauck, Amanda Orin, Stephanie Pitts

2. Task 1

One type of meta-design environment other than a wiki that is in widespread use is online distribution of open source operating systems and applications. Like a wiki, this sort of meta-design environment provides a forum for sharing ideas, though actual usable software is shared over open source distribution more commonly than it is on wikis. Typically, a user of open source software will obtain a basic distribution of an open source operating system. This operating system is designed, implemented and supported by a particular organization. Such an operating system provides very basic functionality. In order for a user to put together a system that will be useful for them, they must also install a number of plugins and applications which give more specific functionality than a basic operating system. These plugins and applications can be found online or created by the user.

Open source code allows users to implement systems faster via code reuse and implementation design. Wikis allow users to further their knowledge of a subject or contribute their ideas on a certain topic. In this way the communities are quite similar. Users of wikis are contributing to a social or information driven environment via textual resources, while open source communities are contributing to a base of usable code. A great example of how these two kinds of meta design systems thrive is wikipedia vs. the android platform. In both cases, ideas are shared in order to help others accomplish something, but where wikipedia stops at these ideas, the community around the android platform shares software that can be used as is, or modified and expanded. Such modified code can be shared with the community so long as proper credit is given to the original code from which it is derived.

Task 2

Between the two wikis there are many differences. One of the easiest to spot is how graphical the start page of the CreativeIT wiki is. Upon entering our wiki one encounters a list of news links and a sidebar for navigation. In my opinion the graphical feature is a positive change as far as navigating the wiki. There is however a trade off. Our wiki has a search bar located at the top of each page. This makes it easy to locate documents via tag. The CreativeIT wiki has a search feature, but you have to click a link to get to it.

On every page in our wiki there is a toolbar which allows someone to interact with the page they are currently viewing. In particular one can edit any page they encounter. On the CreativeIT wiki there is no such toolbar.

Both wikis require that you be signed in in order to edit content. This is a socially responsible thing to do, because it encourages that someone be a member of the community to contribute content.This fosters a community atmosphere ans insures, to a certain degree that content is meaningful and on topic.

The CreativeIT wiki is somewhat difficult to judge, because the pages link is broken, which makes it difficult to look at content. Also, when you select the members feature a cool graphic comes up. However, because there are so many members they overlap and are difficult to read. Luckily the CreativeIT wiki creator took the time to also list members on the side. But this begs the question as to why they did both. One or the other really should have been sufficient. If the graphic is necessary there should be a more easily understood graphic. If it not necessary then a list would suffice just as well. The two together are a bit redundant.

In our opinion the CreativeIT wiki seems more approachable. It seems less technical and more user friendly. Our wiki allows for endless modifiability, but in general isn't particularly easy to use. For example, in an upper level CS course we needed to take a whole day of class just going over how to use its features.