Web2Go

Web 2.0 is all about collaborating and sharing information with others. Wikis are a great way to do this. “So what’s a wiki and how do I find one?”, you cry.

Read on as Web2Go reveals a few wiki secrets…

If you thought wikis had something to do with sport, think again. If you thought (like a few of my friends did) that people who had started a wiki actually also owned a wand and turned people into frogs in their spare time, you’d be wrong.

A wiki is a collection of webpages that can be easily edited by members and viewed by anyone with an Internet connection and a web browser.

The word ‘wiki’ is Hawaiian for ‘fast’ and an article from one of the world’s largest wikis, Wikipedia, also suggests that wiki has more recently come to stand for ‘What I Know Is’.

Unlike a website or a blog which is usually the work of one person, the success of a wiki relies on getting content from many places and faces. For this reason, wikis are a particularly effective tool for building member-driven online communities.

For example, if you wanted to start your own wiki about parenting kids with CP or about what it’s like to live with CP you could jump onto Wikispaces, sign up for a free wiki and invite others to join. It only takes about 10 minutes to create your online presence and share it with the world, so as the Hawaiians would say, it’s ‘wiki’!

After setting up your wiki you might write an article or post a link or comment about assistive technology and someone else might come along and add more information or clarification about what you’ve just written.

As your wiki’s fame starts to spread, members might post articles about other hot topics such as transport, government funding or accessible pubs ; ). Soon you’ll have a cache of contributions, offering differing perspectives on your chosen topic, all gathered in the one spot.

The English version of Wikipedia boasts over 2, 431, 000 user-created, peer-reviewed articles and there are hundreds of thousands more Wikipedia contributions available in other languages.

Both the biggest drawback and the biggest benefit of wikis is that the items posted to them can be created by anybody and everybody, rather than just experts.

While this offers Netheads everywhere lots of opportunities to ‘liberate’ information it can also cause havoc if wiki content is poorly researched, fabricated or even sabotaged. (For an interesting take on the perils of unreliable wikis and disability information visit the BBC’s Ouch website message board.)

If you’d like to sample some disability-related wikis, here are a few places to start. (Please share your finds and suggestions by leaving a comment below.) And if reading this post and wiki list compels you to start your own bigger and better wiki, remember to tell us all about it!

DisapediaGlobal Assistive Technology EncyclopediaWiki Accessibility Interest Group