The following example has been added to the 11 1/2 Things wiki:
Wiki Surgery - The Free Surgical Encyclopedia
http://www.wikisurgery.com
Other wikis:
For my library users:
The Neurodegeneration Research Wiki
This is maintained by MRC Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases and aims to be an information point for students, carers and researchers.
For students:
TSR Wiki (The Student Room)
This is written by students, for students. It covers all aspects of university life - choosing universities, courses, accommodation, entertainment etc.
For librarians:
LIS Wiki
This was established to "give the library community a chance to explore the usefulness of wikis". It welcomes contributions on anything library-related, encourages debate on issues currently facing the sector, and links to other useful sites and articles of interest.
Thoughts on wikis...
- Searching for wikis on Google is not a good idea - it just returns lots of wikipedia articles!
- Wikis are more difficult to find and there is less of a snowball effect. If you find a good blog, the chances are that it will point you in the direction of other useful blogs covering similar topics. This does not seem to be the case with wikis. Perhaps because blogs are written by individuals and are even more narrowly-focused than wikis, whereas wikis are written by many and the purpose of a wiki is to distribute facts/information, rather than soliloquise?
- Wikis can be very powerful tools, using the collective intelligence of the crowd to refine and correct information.
- They epitomise the benefits of web 2.0 tools generally - they can be accessed anywhere, are easy to edit, and can be updated/amended by anyone.
- Wikis have one big advantage over traditional encylopedias/reference books - there are no size limits. A wiki can continue to grow infinitely and indefinitely. However, the larger a wiki becomes, the greater the need for good indexing and anchoring within the website, otherwise it becomes difficult to navigate for the user.
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