Matthew
joespencer
Robert C.
robf
BrianJ
douglashunter
Kevin Barney
Jim F.
nhilton
cherylem
Clark Goble
NathanG
jennywebb
janetlisonbee
kirkcaudle
Karl D.
KarenBlog vs Wiki
Posted by Matthew on January 31, 2007
Following on the state of the blog post and some recent comments on the wiki, I think there is some work we need to do to figure out the relationship between the blog and the wiki. The conclusion of this work will be conventions about how we use each and how the two work together at Feast upon the Word.
I suggest we start with a discussion here on the blog and write up whatever conventions we ultimately choose on the wiki. (Right there that tells you a lot about how I think of each and how I think they should be related.)
Here are a few thoughts to get the discussion rolling
Blog positives:
* Focuses community on a few topics for discussion
* Easy for all to participate
* Good for transient items (e.g. current topics, news, etc.)
Blog negatives:
* Not as good for future readers (archives are hard to find, most discussions end without any conclusions, culture doesn’t typically encourage commenting on really old posts)
* Only some people are allowed to start new posts
Wiki positives:
* Good for readers. All the past work makes its way into the text they are presented with. Discussion along the way and past changes are available but buried behind other tabs.
* Good for more permanent content
* Keeps history of changes.
* Egalitarian–anyone can edit anything
Wiki negatives:
* Complicated for new users to learn
* Writing is harder (partly this is writing from a neutral point of view but I think it is more than that.)
* Format of talk pages isn’t particularly discussion friendly (and it is too bad because it could be!)
brianj said
Regarding the problems with discussion in both the blog and the wiki format:
They both have major disadvantages. I was thinking about this yesterday, as I tried to follow the discussion on Jim F’s Sunday School lesson 4—there are so many going on that I lose track of some and they never get a response. Many good topics are brought up on blogs that never get discussed for this very reason. Then, because blogs only highlight what is recent, other good ideas start but never finish.
I don’t think the wiki solves this problem. It still displays discussions as a “thread,” but if we look at the discussion on Lesson 4 we see that it is not a thread. It’s more of a web. I’m dreaming of an entirely new format for displaying discussions, one that quickly allows a user to find the tail end of a particular part of a discussion, therefore picking up those good ideas that were “lost in the rush” and also treating recent and past topics equally. (The wiki does this last part very well.)
brianj said
I should also say that the discussion here has made me vow to give posting on the wiki a try.
Robert C. said
Addressing BrianJ’s #1, I think there are ways to do threaded comments on a blog, though I haven’t really seen this in practice so I’m not sure how well it would work (and the fact that I haven’t seen it makes me beleive it doesn’t work very well, but then I went to Carnegie Mellon where there tends to be a dogmatic belief in efficient markets–the joke is that if a prof. there sees a $20 bill on the ground, he won’t pick it up b/c he believes that if the $20 were really there, someone else would’ve already picked it up; maybe you have to study finance to think this is funny…).
Joe Spencer said
Thank you, Matthew, for starting this very important discussion.
I see the blog as a sort of pathway leading into and out of the wiki. The discussions would, if taken along these lines, divide essentially into two categories (not including meta-discussion, questions like the one this post raises): study and teaching. Discussions that fall under the category of “study” would wend their way towards the wiki. Discussions about how to study would prepare wiki contributors to do better and more serious work, helping them to feel more comfortable contributing to the research and writing that goes on there. And discussions about a particular doctrine or scriptural theme (discussions too broad for the commentary pages) would hopefully end with some effort at transferring the most important insights, conclusions, and questions to the wiki itself. Discussions that fall under the category of “teaching” would wend their way from the wiki towards the everyday work of the Church. Drawing on the questions, lexical notes, exegesis, and links found on the wiki, those discussing aspects of teaching will get a better sense of how to take the more “focused” work of textual engagement to the classroom, to family home evening, to speaking assignments, etc.
In short, I envision (and I mean in the longterm) the blog becoming a sort of mediation between everyman’s study and teaching and the wiki itself. The danger of any mediation at all (in any circumstance) is that a mediator can too easily become a wall.
If others feel that these two broad categories have a similar ultimate potential, then it might be worth doing a bit more on all of our parts to balance these two categories in our posting.
Perhaps the most difficult thing we would face in dividing things up this way is the actual lesson posts. Are they on teaching or on studying? They and the discussions that follow them open up many possibilities for material that can be simply cut and pasted to the wiki, but I imagine that most people who follow them closely are looking for help this week, trying to work out a lesson right now. So that may never be quite so clear cut for us.
Some thoughts, anyway.
KyleM said
Bullitin Board:
Anyone can start a thread, or you can limit starting of a thread.
You can have different forums for different kinds of topics.
Searchable.
Can respond to specific posts easier.
It would be possible to permalink a wiki entry to a specific forum, and probably specific threads.
Robert C. said
I like Joe’s vision. A Bulletin Board probably wouldn’t be a bad option, but my sense is that they’re a dying breed, though I’m not sure why. I’m guessing b/c the quality of content has tended to be low b/c it’s hard to monitor bulletin boards.
A couple other ideas:
We could take turns writing up Sunday school discussions, I’d be willing to, say, once a month spend an hour or so moving the highlights from the Sunday school questions and discussions to the wiki. Since I don’t want to do this every week, I sort of talk myself out of doing it at all….
Another idea is to pick a particular (non-SS) scriptural passage, theme, or book that several of us are interested in studying, and focus a series of blog posts on this topic (perhaps taking turns), and then write up a summary of what we learn through the discussions or posts. (I’m blatantly stealing this idea from Adam Miller.) This might address some of the intimidation concerns that BrianJ and nhilton have expressed, and it would be more obviously a group voice that we use when writing things up on the wiki. Joe has recently suggested taking up a Mormon reading of Hebrews b/c it seems to have been key in Joseph Smith’s life and teachings. I think that’d be a great project to start this kind of experiment with.
Joe Spencer said
Robert, I like your comments. In fact, I think both ideas are worth taking up. A couple of volunteers would set up a rotating SS-transfer schedule (I’d certainly be willing to do one a month also). And I think it would be worth doing something like this Hebrews project here and seeing how that might transfer into the wiki. We would be able, in the course of that sort of discussion, to draw on what has already been posted at the wiki as well. And we might foster some more direct engagement with already-written commentary. That would be wonderful.
nhilton said
Brethren, I think you’ve neglected to note that the wiki appearance implies authority that has no basis being there. A novice puruser might actually BELIEVE what someone has posted on the wiki and be ruined for life, if not eternity. The blog, on the otherhand, is clearly conjecture/opinion spiced with the occassional quote & reference/link. I fear that keeping an archive of mis-information, no matter how “in good faith” it is at its posting date might just be creating a cyberspace file #13 or Pandora’s box. Is there a disclaimer you can have shown on every wiki-page? An alert telling the viewer that the content is subject to idiocy?
Robert C. said
nhilton, good points. We’ll definitely work on getting a more prominent disclaimer on the wiki (though I take everything on the internet with a big grain of salt!). I agree the preview box would be handy, though you shouldn’t hold your breat–I’m pretty sure we can get it when we upgrade, but I’m not sure it’s possible with WordPress.com (and, more importantly, I’m not sure I’m up for trying to figure this out!).
Joe Spencer said
I’m hurt, Robert: you take my words with a grain of salt?
Matthew said
nhilton #8. I agree that more of a disclaimer would be good. I am not as concerned that people will dig through old page versions and take them as authoritative. I think if you know enough to get an old version of a page–then you probably know it isn’t authoritative.
Robert & Joe, #6, #7. I’d sign up for once a month summarizing of Sunday School Lessons too. For me this is analogous to when you go to a meeting–somebody has to do the work of taking notes and writing them up and sending them out to everyone afterwards–if not, you end up at the next meeting going over the same points all over again. The problem is, sometimes the only type of people in the meeting are the type who aren’t inclined to take notes. I think the blog scene attracts the same type–generally–people who would like someone else to do it. (I’m in that group.) So for that reason, signing up and rotating is probably a good way of handling this.
One more idea on the same lines, maybe we could have a convention that if you start a post on a scripture topic on the blog, it is your job to make sure that the discussion gets turned into something lasting on the wiki.
Robert C. said
OK, I’ll summarize SS lesson #5, maybe Joe can do #6, Matthew #7, I’ll do #8, etc. What’ll be nice is that when we do the BOM next year, we can add the SS content from Jim’s thread 4 years ago to the wiki before it’s time to start that lesson. I think this will be a good way to make sure that the wiki gradually grows in usefulness over time.
Also, we should explicitly add this on the list of things new users can help with. I actually started doing this with Jim’s (BOM) lessons when I first started with the wiki precisely b/c I was very unsure of what I could or should try to add to the wiki myself. I figured adding Jim’s notes would be a good way for me to both work through his notes and to help with the wiki. The main problem is that I was trying to go too fast (keeping up the schedule of Pres. Hinckley’s challenge to read the BOM in whatever it was, 4 months or so…).
And I like the idea of summarizing your own blog posts on scripture topics.
Joe Spencer said
I also like the idea of summarizing your own blog posts on the wiki. I don’t know if you (Matthew) or anyone else has caught the idea Robert and I are working out, namely, doing a wiki-to-blog-to-wiki exploration of the Book of Hebrews (we’ll begin with some work there, and then take the interesting questions it raises to the blog for discussion, and then take the insights and conclusions back again and post them there). I think it is a good idea, and I’d like to see how fruitful it is (if it is quite fruitful, then I’d like to see us do it more often).
Jeff Batt said
If I could put my two cents in. I really love the blog. To me it strikes more of a personal cord. Of course I keep in mind that it is someone else’s opinions. I always look back to the scriptures and the leaders of the church to confirm any doctrinal teachings. I learn greatly by experience and seeing application of doctrines and priniples of the gospel applied in others lives. I take these principles and apply them. We are all srtiving to learn the gospel at all differant levels. The blog in my opinion takes things that some times may be over my head on the wiki, and helps me see them in application and then when I go back to the wiki I understand that much more. We all are teachers and learners. We can all benefit from each other, The more oppurtunities I have to hear others talk about the gospel and to maybe put my two cents in benefits me into diving more into the scriptures to help me build my own testimony and helps me think of what I can say to perhaps help other. I do not know all (Nor does anyone else) but by working out our thoughts and always going back to the scriptures and prayer and church we can work all in coming to our Heavenly Father. If that is always our focus then we will all stay doctrinally correct. We all learn from each other and have already been edified from the stories and applications of Gospel principles that have been on this site.
Jeff Batt said
Sorry those where just my thoughts as I was going through the posts on this page.. I think that if you took out any teachings that may appear on the site and put them in the wiki is a great idea, or as joe put it wiki-blog-wiki.
Matthew said
KyleM #5, RobertC #6,
I wonder if one reason bulletin boards are less popular is that they tend to have a lot more threads which can make them hard to keep up with. I’m not sure if that reason is applicable to us or not. At this point though, I think it makes sense for us to stick with the blog at least for a while before deciding to bag it in favor of a bulletin board.
My wife–who used Phinished (a bulletin board for people working on their PhD) liked how the replies were nested versus how they work on blogs.
Maybe though, by not having this feature, blogs encourage people to stay more on the original topic.
Jim F. said
I like the wiki and I like the blog. I like the wiki for the potential it creates that eventually I can go to it and look up questions and notes for any passage of scripture I am interested in. But I like the personal touch of the blog, of seeing an interchange between participants. I also like the blog because there are things I can do in it that I can’t really do on the wiki. For example, on the wiki it is a lot more difficult to compare and contrast passages of scripture or to ask some of the broader questions. As a result, I remain double-minded.
I would sign up for a week to relvant transfer stuff from the blog to the wiki. I’ve intended to do my own study materials every week, but–as anyone can see–I’ve not been particularly successful.
nhilton said
I don’t know if other’s are experiencing this or just me, but the center column of this blog is overlapping both side columns to the extent that I can’t read the words. It’s made it very difficult to navigate.
Robert C. said
Thanks for the heads up nhilton. I can’t seem to replicate this problem in IE 6.0 or Firefox–what browser are you using? I assume it has to do with my effort to increase the font-size and hence the column width for the sidebar Categories, so I changed this back so it’s closer to the default settings–let me know if you (or anyone else) is still having problems.
Joe Spencer said
That fixed it on my browser.
nhilton said
Fixed. Thanks.
nhilton said
I just read some posts on the wiki re: Matt.3 which I don’t believe. I’m not sure I can value this mode of archiving opinion. I don’t know who posted it, easily, and it still has the air of authority yet it’s clearly just one person’s take on that specific scripture. I’d love to have a dialog re: these posts but this doesn’t seem to be the forum. If someone objects to the post are they to counter it with another post in the wiki beside the other post? Who trumps who? The reader, without a great deal of effort, doesn’t know where one person’s post ends & another’s begins.
Joe Spencer said
On which verse is the problem? Usually the discussion pages there are for any discussion of this sort. But it might be worth saying here that on the wiki, everyone trumps everyone. I think it is worth taking up the specific passage, though. Where are you looking?
Robert C. said
Here is all the commentary for Matt 3–I only see one non-controversial question, so surely you meant another chapter.
The idea is that all the regular users of the wiki are their own editors. We actually had a system for a while that sort of made this editing process a bit more formal (assigning certain users as “administrators” to have a little bit more authority to arbitrate if there was a big disagreement), but it seemed unnecessary at this stage of the wiki’s development. The idea (which, by the way, seems to work quite well for Wikipedia), is that a neutral point of view is used that avoids wording that sounds authoritative and that accomodates a wide range of differing views on any particular passage.
nhilton said
I’m sorry, Matthew 4. It’s all the stuff regarding Christ facing the devil’s temptations.
Robert C. said
nhilton, I finally got around to cleaning up the commentary on Matt 4:8-9. It still could use lots of improvement (hint hint!), but you were right to point out that this commentary did not follow the guidelines that we’ve established for the wiki (if you click on the “history” tab, you’ll see it was posted by an infrequent user). I basically just tried to word the points that were posted there in a more tentative way, and in a way that was more based on the text itself. I’d be interested to hear your feedback (here, though preferrably there) on how to improve the exegesis written there.
Part of the risk of having an open-forum wiki (and not monitoring it super-assiduously) is that once in a while there will be commentary there that is not very reliable. Rather than viewing this as a major drawback, I prefer to think of this as a personal challenge for me to improve the commentary! So far, we have not had any problems with people disagreeing over what should be posted on the commentary pages, and I don’t anticipate this to be a problem in the future (though, if it is, I’m confident we will find a way to resolve the problem amicably).
Matthew said
#6, #7, #11, #12, #17. Here’s the schedule I am seeing.
Robert does lesson #5. He’s done.
Nice work: http://feastupontheword.org/Site:SS_lessons/NT_lesson_5
Joe does lesson #6. Still outstanding. Joe, can you still do it?
Link: http://feastupontheword.org/Site:SS_lessons/NT_lesson_6
Matthew does lesson #7. Still outstanding. I’ll do it!
Link: http://feastupontheword.org/Site:SS_lessons/NT_lesson_7
My dad does lesson #8. Dad, does that work for you?
Link: http://feastupontheword.org/Site:SS_lessons/NT_lesson_8
Will anyone else volunteer to take a turn?
Matthew said
re: the disclaimer on the wiki.
I admit I am puzzled by anyone’s interest in the disclaimer. My experience is that how authoritative people take something to be has little to do with what disclaimers are given. But anyway, a strength of the wiki is that those people who are most interested in something can work on that. I certainly don’t want to stand in the way of someone else improving on the disclaimer who is interested in doing so.
Here is the page showing our disclaimer. And here is the associated discussion page. The disclaimer page is one of the few pages on the site which can only be edited by an admin (this is functionality just built into the software we use–not a result of some specific concern I have about people improving the disclaimer page.)
But anyway, anyone can suggest alternate texts on the associated discussion page and an admin will then make the change.
As for making the disclaimer more prominent, if someone else invests the time in figuring out how to do that in mediawiki (the software we use) I’m willing to help implement the change. I don’t think the disclaimer should be the most prominent item on the page but I agree that it would be nice if it weren’t buried quite so well in a small link at the bottom of the page.
Joe Spencer said
Sorry it took so long, but I’ve got everything for lesson 6 transferred now.
Matthew said
Joe. Looks great! It looks like Robert is starting the cycle over again w/ lesson 9. Does anyone else want to take a turn? We’d love the help.
Cherylem said
Can you explain what “other page changes” represents? It seems like there are good discussions going on there but . . . where are they exactly on the Wiki/Blog?
Matthew said
hmmm. I just wrote a long response and it got eaten (and this one can’t even be blamed on our spam detection system). So let’s see if a short answer will work.
The top right shows commentary pages on the wiki that have been recently changed. The middle on the right shows recents comments to the blog. The bottom right shows pages on the wiki that aren’t commentary pages that have recently been changed. (I think your question is what these pages are. Did that answer it?)
A better way to really understand what changes are going on at the wiki is to look at the recent changes page. Because it shows a whole page it shows a lot more detail. You can get there by clicking the link on the left nav titled “wiki recent changes.” Or click: http://feastupontheword.org/Special:Recentchanges
Feel free to join in on the work there.