Wikipedia and the Value of No Experts At All

By leelefever on January 18, 2008 - 10:32am.

• Categories:
• experts
• plainenglish
• wiki
• Comments: 14

My Dad has a saying about trying to get boys to do work.  "One boy is worth one boy, two boys is worth half-a-boy and three boys is worth no boys at all."

When I look at Wikipedia with my plain English glasses, I think the same is true about experts. Look at it this way...

Let's say you're trying to learn about digestion.  You can likely find an expert who can sit with you and make digestion very easy to understand. Now, lets say you're talking to two experts. Something changes - the experts are now double checking each other and looking for ways to relate their unique point of view. With each expert you add, the more accurate the information becomes and the harder it becomes for you to understand.

Would a Wiki By Any Other Name Smell As Sweet?

By leelefever on July 25, 2007 - 12:24pm.

• Categories:
• friends
• language
• statistics
• Technology in Plain English
• wiki
• Comments: 10

Did you know that in a recent survey by Harris Interactive that only 16% of the online public know what a wiki is? For some, this will seem surprising. Others will say "what's a wiki?"

Wiki Video in Multiple Languages via DotSub

By leelefever on May 31, 2007 - 10:47am.

• Categories:
• cooltools
• dotsub
• language
• lesson
• show
• video
• wiki
• Comments: 0

Just after posting our first video on RSS , I learned a few valuable lessons:

1. Video is inaccessible for the hearing impaired

2. Video is not easy to translate into other languages

3. There is a new site that addresses both of these issues called DotSub .

DotSub makes it easy for me to transcribe the spoken words into text subtitles. Then, once the subtitles exist, it enables DotSub members to voluntarily translate the text into other languages and post the video to their blogs. This makes videos international and more accessible - for free.

Purple Numbers

By leelefever on February 18, 2005 - 12:29pm.

• Categories:
• blogging
• wiki
• Comments: 3

Last night I got a chance to hang out with a majority of the folks from SocialText at Nancy White's House. Among other things, I learned about a resource by Chris Dent called Purple Numbers that I'd never heard about before.

Blogs or Wikis to Support Disaster-Relief Site

By leelefever on December 28, 2004 - 2:17pm.

• Categories:
• blogging
• community
• platform
• Social Design
• wiki
• Comments: 5

Dina Mehta, who lives in Mumbai India, helped set up a great weblog to support relief efforts in the region after the earthquake/tsunami. Since setting up the site, she's wondering if it would have been better to use a wiki instead of a blog.

The Household Wiki

By leelefever on December 12, 2004 - 11:21am.

• Categories:
• home
• seattle
• wiki
• Comments: 1

My wife and I have been making an effort to move away from the TV. The winter weather in Seattle makes it easy to sit in front of the tube and eat Cheetos all day- which we both agree is a bad, bad thing.

We’re finding that without TV we focus more on computers in the house and getting more things done via wireless Internet connections. I think we’ll have a laptop with a wireless Internet connection in our immediate vicinity from now on.

This sets us up for an experiment using wikis in the household. We’ve been using a wiki to organize travel plans lately and it’s been perfect. We can update it at home or work or anywhere we’re connected. This experience has me thinking about other ways we can use a wiki in our house.

Wikipedia: Replies to Common Objections

By leelefever on December 3, 2004 - 11:25am.

• Categories:
• wiki
• Comments: 0

I'm getting more and more fascinated with wikis. I still have some issues and I don't think they are the answer to all our prayers, but damn they are fascinating to me.

Perhaps most fascinating are the impressions and objections people have about wikis and how "the wiki way" seems to account for many of them. In my mind the wiki keepers work like an invisible hand to move the wiki forward even in the midst of what can seem like chaos to the outsider.

Wiki in the Family

By leelefever on November 28, 2004 - 10:44am.

• Categories:
• home
• sachi
• seattle
• wiki
• Comments: 3

Last night my wife Sachiko and I were talking about a trip we're thinking of taking in the next couple of years. As we talked over the evening, it became a brainstroming session on all the things we needed to remember, manage, discuss, archive, etc.

After a little while, I said "Hey, what if we had an online place to keep all this information?"

Sachiko's first words were, "We could use a wiki!"

All I could think was- I love this girl.

Business Week Interview with Howard Rheingold

By leelefever on August 13, 2004 - 7:55am.

• Categories:
• community
• interview
• wiki
• Comments: 0

I really like it when Howard talks about the future. It speaks to me on such a real level. In this interview, he (among many other things) talks about how the choices we make as technology users (links in weblogs, ratings on Amazon, articles in Wikipedia) make for really useful ways to filter and find information without the intent to do so- and how this is disruptive to businesses.

Wiki and the Perfect Camping Trip

By leelefever on May 3, 2004 - 10:34am.

• Categories:
• Technology in Plain English
• wiki
• Comments: 10

Updated: We have created a short (3:52) video called "Wikis in Plain English " that you might enjoy. It was inspired by the content of this post.

This entry should provide an easy-to-understand (but fictional) example of a wiki at work for people new to the technology/concept. While this use of a wiki may be unconventional, I think it provides a foundation for understanding how wikis can be used to accumulate and organize group information.

Background: