Week 5: The World of Wiki

Today we'll see three more online communities: Shira will present Retroland, Tony will present Bodyboarder, and Jesse will show us BigSoccer.

We'll also take a little tour of Wikipedia and Wikia to get a feel for what they are and how they work. We'll also discuss the issues raised in the reading for this week (including crowd vs. community, the role of "experts" vs. "amateurs," the nature and effectiveness of wikiquette, etc.).

Then we'll get started on creating and editing our own wiki pages. This requires learning basic wiki markup language, which is pretty simple (kind of like HTML, but different). We'll begin by looking at a simple prototype I created on Wikia, and everyone will create a page and link to it by editing the main page.

HOMEWORK:

1. Finish your wiki page. Write at least 500 words on your topic. Break the page into at least three sections using level-two headlines. Include an internal link to the main BECA 670 Wikia page and at least 3 external links. If you run into tech trouble, check out the excellent tutorials, which will take you through everything from creation to editing and formatting text. NOTE: DUE 9:00 a.m. THURSDAY!
   
2. Sharon, Veronica, Reid and John will present online communities that use wikis as one of their components.