Days of the Wiki

Playing with wikis is fun. I have spent some time editing two wikis over the past week.

One of them is Wiki Wiki Sandbox. I am responsible for the "Slayer" drawing I did in a notebook a year and a half ago in Ireland. This is a really interesting concept for beginners (or newbs) to learn how to operate on a wiki. I really like the name 'sandbox' as this is all just an older, technological sandbox.

I used the experience on that wiki to edit Wikitravel to include my local neighborhood restaurant from back home. I edited the Silver Spring page to include the Stained Glass Pub.

This experience taught me a lot about wikis and how they operate. This process strikes me as a great way to get the whole story on a subject. Using the changes I made to Wikitravel as an example, I know what the best places to eat at are in Silver Spring, where as a travel book would probably advise people to eat in Rockville or Bethesda.

Maybe somebody out there will find my changes helpful.

Best Wiki Ever

A wiki, according to Wikipedia (conflict of interest??), is "a type of website that allows anyone visiting the site to add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration."

Eventhough the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, was online back in 1995, this is a relatively new wave of technology that is revolutionizing the way in which the world views the internet.

Some may argue that since anyone can edit a wiki, then it is not a reliable source for information. A recent article, Wikipedia/Britannica: A Toss Up, highlights the argument that Wikipedia is just as accurate as Britannica. However, since wiki's store all the changes over time, they can easily be reverted back to their original content. Vandalism is rarely a serious problem.

Interestingly, 'wiki' is also an acronym for 'What I Know Is'. Pretty cool.

Jeff Gralnick

Jeff Gralnick has been a broadcast veteran at CBS, ABC, and NBC over the years. After graduating from NYU, he began his career at CBS in 1959. Gralnick has worked as a field reporter, Vice President and executive producer of Special Events and World News Tonight, and Executive Producer of the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.

His biggest accomplishment in web journalism has been overseeing the development and launch of http://abcnews.go.com/. This ethos makes me believe he will have a lot to say when discussing web journalism with our class.

In an article he wrote back in 2001, Gralnick says,

What won't win this game is a "plain vanilla" web site like the ones you see far too many times in far too many markets as you prowl the Net. You know the ones. Minimal graphics. Local weather but not well done. No local traffic. Minimal content beyond headlines. Brand building limited to schedules and those mandatory "meet Glen and Glenda" anchor profiles.

Remarkably, this quote holds up to the test of time. Just because a company or organization has a website, doesn't mean they are web savy. They still need to put effort into the site and post relevent content.

Two questions I would ask Mr. Gralnick are, 1.) Have websites improved at an appropriate rate since he made the quote, or is that statement still relevent? and 2.) What ideas he brought to the development on abcnews.com that have shown up on other sites.

Hopefully, Gralnick can expand on this idea in class today.