Wikis & the mighty Wikipedia...

Before this week I didn't know what on earth a wiki was and certainly didn't know that its name derived from Hawaiian! However, having perused the Oxford Web 2.0 wiki, I've now got a feel for what wikis are and how they can serve a purpose. From what I've seen they're kind of like a simplified online forum, giving people space to contribute ideas, questions, comments etc easily, quickly and effectively. They don't seem to be the most flashy of tools, but I think the whole point is that they are far more about functionality than style. I think their simplicity is quite refreshing actually. I can definitely see wikis being really useful in collaborative projects etc.

As for Wikipedia, it's my guilty pleasure! Despite being warned of its inherent evilness and to reference it on pain of death at university, it's my first port of call 99% of the time when I want to look something up quickly or get a brief overview of something. I'm well aware of the arguments about its reliabilty and I can understand how the open-editing feature of wikipedia make a lot of people very dubious about using it. I think as long as you use it critically and don't rely on it soley for important information then you're alright.