Week 1
For this assignment I was thinking to find an interesting topic on Web 2.0. Any article which talks about new web site technology based on web 2.0, and in addition to that I have to find a wiki which talks basically about web technologies. Which this part took a lot of my time. Any ways after gooling so many times I end up using Wikia wiki. This wiki has different categories under for web applications done by web 2.0, such as Del.icio.us , Digg and Flickr.
"Wikia is a community destination supporting the creation and development of wiki communities on any topic people are passionate about. Wikia currently support over 3,000 communities in more than 70 languages. Part of the free culture movement, Wikia content is released under a free content license and operates on the Open Source MediaWiki software. Explore our existing communities or start a new one. In Wikia "Anyone can edit content on Wikia""
Therefore I chose this wiki a good place to contribute my articles. First I registered as a user and posted three articles which are
All three articles talked about web application done using web 2.0 and kind of interesting. I posted the articles on October 8, 2007, and monitoring the activity of it. Upon creating my articles I putted each article under reasonable categories, so that when ever a user starts searching an articles based on category they can find my articles easily. For instance my first article has "Web 2.0", the second article "Ajax and Web 2.0" and the last one has "Web 2.0 and Social Networking" categories.
If a user is registered Wikia will provide a menus like
- My user page: Where users use it as their home page
- My Talk: Where users write and talk about an article
- My Preferences: Where users can add and edit their user profile
- My Watchlist: Where users follow and monitor the things going on round their articles
- My Contribution: Where a user sees the list of contributions he/she made
But unfortunately until October 12, I did not see any activity under my articles. This might be the wiki I picked is not that much famous and has no many visitors or people who are visiting didn't know how to comment or edit the articles. Any ways I emailed to my friends to visit this articles and comment on it. And am waiting to see the changes.
I'll keep you posted.
Contribute to an online encyclopedia - Part II
Week 2
Ok, today is October 15, 2007. I checked my postings status and I got something interesting. Two of my articles has been rated, it was a kind of interesting to know the articles I wrote has been read. Any ways Goodbye Passwords, Hello Vidoop got three out of five and AjaxWindows The break through WebOS got four out of five, it is nice ha. Even though my last article didn't got any thing :). But still am having a hard time to get where to see who actually saw the articles and who made any correction. And am working on it. I'll keep on posted on that one and any new things going to happen in the coming week.
Contribute to an online encyclopedia - Part III
Week 2
Today is October 18, 2007. I again checked my articles, but unfortunately nothing has happened. And I tried to investigate why. Basically Wikia's interface and functionalities are easy to use and straight forward. And rating an article is extrimly easy it is just clicking on the stars which are located bellow an article. The only thing I found is that under each article there is a link "Share it" which allows a user to send an email to a friend or anybody to see the article. But unfortunately this functionality does not work. I tried to send and email to a friend and the email never reaches. May be this can be one of the problems for which the articles cannot be seen by a lot of users. Other than that I could not find any problem with the system. My only guess can be, may be Wikia is not that famous or my articles are not that intrusting to attract many users to comment on it.
In addition to that starting from October 15, 2007 I have been monitoring an article on Wikipedia. I did not add or edit anything to the article, I was just watching who did what things. The article was "Queen of Sheba" which is the origin of my name "Makeda". On this page people where making some minor changes such us correcting dates, adding additional definitions, and others since October 15 till now (October 18). In Wikipedia anybody can edit an article as long as they know how to edit an article by using annotation (which is the way you manage how the edited page will look like) and the IP address of the person will be recored as an author. If the user is a registered user instead of IP address the users' name will be recorded. Furthermore Wikipedia has a strict rule on copyrighted materials. It is stated as
"Any of the trademarks, service marks, collective marks, design rights, personality rights or similar rights that are mentioned, used or cited on this site are the property of their respective owners. Unless otherwise stated, Wikimedia sites are neither endorsed by nor affiliated with any of the holders of such rights, nor can Wikimedia grant rights to use otherwise protected materials. Your use of any such incorporeal property is at your own risk."
The full rule how to use the Wikipedia can be found under this link.
Contribute to an online encyclopedia - Conclusion
Week 2
Now it is October 18, 2007 8:00 PM, still nothing happened on my articles in Wikia. But on the other hand my other article the one I only monitor the activity "The Queen of Sheba" on Wikipedia has very little modification. And also the things changed yesterday are replaced with the original one. Basically what happens in the Wikipedia community, there are a group of authors who over look the current and recent changes on every article. And if any of this authorized authors thinks the added information is irrelevant, redundant, or unnecessary they will delete any changes made by other users. Therefor most of the time this situation will make the user frustrated.
This was one of my reasons for not writing my articles on Wikipedia, not because do not want but the expectation of the Wikipedia authors communities is very high and also now a days Wikipedia is highly viewed all over the world and any article on it has to be proven heavily.
In general I have learned a lot for the past two weeks on how Wikipedia works. And a Wiki can offer a lot of things for collaborative work, because the general idea of Wiki is anybody from any ware can edit or add any kind of article and people all over the world can contribute to it or learn from it. In addition to that I have learned the value of users in the Wikipedia community. As mentioned above my article was not that much viewed or commented on. But imagine if a lot of people contribute to those articles, how Wikia will be rich in information.
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