SPUG: SPUGwiki Needs Photos, etc.

Andrew Sweger andrew at sweger.net
Tue Jul 22 23:07:21 CDT 2003


On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, James Moore wrote:

> I certainly don't object to other people setting them up, but it doesn't
> surprise me that they don't always get that much input.  What does a wiki
> buy that a mailing list doesn't have?  (OK, I'll admit that for something
> like SPUG I put the utility of pictures and pretty markup right down there
> with the three-week-old Indian takeaway in my fridge.)

[Editor's note: Andrew is in a less than lucid state and may seem a little
out of focus today.]

One of the values I'm finding in the Wiki is the interest it earns with
time. A bad Wiki (one that has a subject without a market[1] or one that's
hard to use) will have negative interest and lose value with time. But a
Wiki that can put at least a good nucleus together starts to draw a market
and positive feedback occurs. People keep contributing. (Of course, at
some point, we'll need negative feedback too to keep things from running
amok. That and refactoring.)

[1] I was going to say audience, but an audience takes a passive role
(what the MPAA, RIAA, Fox, etc. want). But a Wiki helps build a market of
ideas and knowledge. The mail list is excellent for the market banter,
arguing, troubleshooting, etc. Sometimes the knowledge gets lost and
sometimes someone captures it for future reference. A Wiki is just a
convenient community powered knowledge bin. You know, market's not quite
the right word either. What's the word I'm looking for?

-- 
Andrew B. Sweger -- The great thing about multitasking is that several
                                things can go wrong at once.




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