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Wikis, Indexes, Context, and the News
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When Search Isn't Enough
Posted by
Lisa Williams
4/9/2007 6:31:30 AM
A lot of innovation on news sites lately have been about alternatives to search for presenting information to visitors.
The most obvious exam...
A lot of innovation on news sites lately have been about alternatives to search for presenting information to visitors.
The most obvious example of this is the addition of maps. But blogs themselves can be seen as an alternative to search. One example. The Boston Globe has blogs focused around each of their zoned editions: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/west/
In large part, what this blog does is point to articles in the paper about a particular region. It addresses something that's hard to search for -- show me stories within X miles of X location.
But what about other ways of presenting the information coming out of the paper? As is, the newspaper is a stream of news items. But how do the items relate to one another? How does this laundry list of stuff add up to a worldview?
What do we do with the many "pages"?
Two traditional methods: bind those pages into a "book," or arrange them in an outline. If we were trying to think about how to implement these organizing principles, we might think book=wiki and outline=OPML.
Why bother? What these new forms do is let us pass on a body of knowledge, rather than a messy heap of data.
With the book/wiki example, the newspaper responds to the fact that the web really rewards what I call "narrow comprehensiveness." That is, a site with some Denver restaurants is OK; but a site with ALL Denver restaurants is better. A comprehensive resource is more than the sum of its parts, and gets more links from the outside world.
With an outline/OPML, we provide people with a quick way to pass on a body of knowledge. A body of knowledge is more than a rattle-bag of facts. The structure of how the facts relate to one another is important. An outline gives someone who wants to acquire that body of knowledge two important pieces of information: where to start, and which parts of the whole are most important (they're the top-level headings).
Wishing for wikis
Posted by
Terry Steichen
4/6/2007 10:57:22 PM
Amy's characterization of my comments unfortunately suggests a much more blaze' attitude than my actual comments reflect. She argues that I 'imm...
Amy's characterization of my comments unfortunately suggests a much more blaze' attitude than my actual comments reflect. She argues that I 'immediately write off the wiki as a tool to add value to the news article..' However, I don't say anything about using the wiki to ADD value to a news article, only that it has little potential for CREATING such articles.
Her observation that "[w]ikis don't have to be a free-for all", is akin to noting that all dogs don't chase squirrels. Sure, but the problem is, the basic nature of a wiki is to support a collaborative effort that does indeed have many characteristics of a 'free-for-all.' . If you clamp down on wiki users by restricting editing, as Amy suggests might be readily done, you are left with an ordinary blog. Nothing wrong with that, but it's fundamentally different from a real wiki (which was and, I think, is, the subject of this article).
Wikis can be used, as Amy suggests, to provide 'updates on fast-breaking updates to existing topics.' But, that's what the comment section of any blog can do; it's a role that entirely misses the collaborative character of the wiki. (Moreover, when one commenter can change the views of a previous commenter, the result can be very messy.)
She then suggests a wiki role in creating some kind of news index. I certainly appreciate the value of a news index, and agree with her characterization of the benefits stemming from having a good index. However, I can't imagine how to create a usable index via a collaborative wiki.
I certainly agree with her characterization of today's news products as being overly fragmentary. And, I appreciate Amy's fond views of wikis (a technology which I use extensively in my own work). Moreover, I don't deny that there might be some significant potential for using wikis in the news business that I've overlooked.
But, at the moment, I just don't see it.
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