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Discussion: Future of our Wiki
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NordSee |
Future of our Wiki
Apr 23 2009, 1:11 PM EDT
| Post edited: Apr 23 2009, 9:09 PM EDT
Since this wiki was designed as part of our IR Theory course, I am curious to know what we'll do after we are done with this course.Will we pass on the torch to the future IR Theory class students?Will this wiki stay as it is to represent a moment in time? Or are we going to have an IR Theory group/club that will be responsible of maintaining the site? To sum up this wiki has a great potential and we need to decide on its future now.
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eg5703a |
1. RE: Future of our Wiki
Apr 23 2009, 8:54 PM EDT
i personally think we need to keep a handle on it... i would want to pass it on to PTJ's other classes (maybe I'm selfish) but I'm feeling a sense of ownership and don't want next year's to come and take it over. They need to draw their own conclusions.
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ffernau |
2. RE: Future of our Wiki
Apr 24 2009, 9:18 PM EDT
I'm not sure I have a strong opinion on this, but the way I see it we have a few options:1) Leave it as is, as a record of this class. 2) Set it up to be transferred over to future PTJ students 3) Keep it going as a general IR wiki. For this one we probably want to open it up so anyone can register, although this would require a commitment to policing the userbase and making sure to reset bad edits. We would also have to re-tool it a bit away from referencing class discussion and towards being a general resource. This option is cool, but the most work. I'm also unsure of whether a wiki is the best format for something as contentious as IR theory. Would a forum work better? Do you find this valuable? |
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NordSee |
3. RE: Future of our Wiki
Apr 24 2009, 11:00 PM EDT
Fletcher:"I'm also unsure of whether a wiki is the best format for something as contentious as IR theory. Would a forum work better?"What type of a forum and would it be in a blog format? Do you find this valuable? |
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ffernau |
4. RE: Future of our Wiki
Apr 25 2009, 2:46 AM EDT
Well my thought was that the wiki allows lots of people to participate and works well as a reference tool but it isn't so good at allowing people to express disagreement without getting into edit wars. (WetPaint's comments threads let you do this a little, but I think they're unwieldy and awkward.) A blog can do it, but is unwieldy to use for more than a small group of people posting to it (Though if we wanted to continue as a little group to run an IR blog that would be different.)If you want to have a place where lots of people can contribute and a format that allows for discussion and debate, I thought a forum might work well. Something like this: http://s1.zetaboards.com/IR_Test_Forum/index/ (I just threw that up in 2 seconds as an example -- for a well established board see http://www.disboards.com/) Do you find this valuable? |
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NordSee |
5. RE: Future of our Wiki
Apr 25 2009, 9:48 AM EDT
Oh you mean a discussion board! Great idea! So we will in a way progress from our wiki.Do you find this valuable? |
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eg5703a |
6. RE: Future of our Wiki
Apr 25 2009, 11:23 AM EDT
"Kant was a total looney who tried to go to the moon in a garbage can. i love IR. blah blah blah test test. " beautiful. Do you find this valuable? |
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NordSee |
7. RE: Future of our Wiki
Apr 25 2009, 12:40 PM EDT
""Kant was a total looney who tried to go to the moon in a garbage can. i love IR. blah blah blah test test. "Yeah that's just priceless Fletcher. Do you find this valuable? |
ErinKay |
8. RE: Future of our Wiki
Apr 25 2009, 12:59 PM EDT
I second Liz' sense of ownership of the wiki. Handing it off to a new crop of IR theorists might enrich it for a while as there are certainly pages that need some fleshing out, but I think we would soon start to see diminishing marginal returns as the contributions turned less towards summary and more towards analysis that is, I think we can all agree, best handled in a more dialectic (!) format than a wiki. Of course, the concern with leaving it as an artifact of our class is that it will sort of disappear into the abyss of History as the World Spirit marches on and people stop updating and reading it -- at which point it ceases to be much use a general reference as my acquaintance GWF would be glad to point out. (I think he would also agree with Fletcher's insightful assessment of Kant.)The forum idea is cool, but how would it connect to the wiki? Do you find this valuable? |
ProfPTJ |
9. RE: Future of our Wiki
May 1 2009, 5:11 PM EDT
My preference is to hand it off, if I get to teach this course again. Updating and extending the wiki is a good class project for a future section of Theories of International Relations to tackle.I do not plan to take this down, and I do not plan to delete any user accounts. Do you find this valuable? |
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NordSee |
10. RE: Future of our Wiki
May 2 2009, 11:34 AM EDT
"My preference is to hand it off, if I get to teach this course again. Updating and extending the wiki is a good class project for a future section of Theories of International Relations to tackle.So we will have followers? (Wow, this sounded very biblical.) Will we (as your first theory students) have any magical powers, i.e. interfering with their discussions etc.? Do you find this valuable? |
IneffableArtiste |
11. RE: Future of our Wiki
May 3 2009, 12:17 PM EDT
"Will we (as your first theory students) have any magical powers, i.e. interfering with their discussions etc.?That would make it all worthwhile. I approve messing with the newbies. :) Do you find this valuable? |
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ErinKay |
12. RE: Future of our Wiki
May 3 2009, 12:35 PM EDT
"Will we (as your first theory students) have any magical powers, i.e. interfering with their discussions etc.?"Seems like there's a good Lockean precedent for that. We put our labor into the wiki, so we should have some property rights over it :) Do you find this valuable? |
sarahcaffey |
13. RE: Future of our Wiki
May 3 2009, 4:58 PM EDT
Just my thoughts on this-- I can totally see how we as a class, and particularly those of you who have put so much love into this project-- would have a sense of pride and ownership over the wiki.However, maybe we should ask ourselves: what, really, is a wiki? Is a wiki a summary of a bunch of different texts? Is a wiki a record of a discussion or an experience? Personally, while I think a wiki can be these things, I think the real strength of the genre-- and what makes it different from a website, which can be a record or a summary or an exposition, or a forum, which is a conversation-- is that it's a living document. It's a collection of knowledge that is constantly changing as it's added to and as its editors change, and anyone can edit it. We've set out to create a wiki. Not a website or a forum or a record, but a wiki, and one of PTJ's suggested goals for the project was to create a real resource about IR theory. In think in order to create the best /wiki/ possible as well as the best resource possible, we should stay true to the spirit of wiki projects and let it continue to change, and let whoever wants to add to it participate. Um, sorry that was kind of bombastic; if anyone disagrees I am totally open to that. Do you find this valuable? |
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ProfPTJ |
14. RE: Future of our Wiki
May 3 2009, 10:02 PM EDT
"We've set out to create a wiki. Not a website or a forum or a record, but a wiki, and one of PTJ's suggested goals for the project was to create a real resource about IR theory. In think in order to create the best /wiki/ possible as well as the best resource possible, we should stay true to the spirit of wiki projects and let it continue to change, and let whoever wants to add to it participate."I partially agree -- I do think that this little collective child of yours will grow and change over time, but I am not prepared to simply let anyone who wants to come along and start making changes -- IR theory is the kind of thing that I think people have to have some basic credentials and experience to start talking about publicly, and since I don't want to serve as general editor, the control I'm imposing comes at boundaries of the population with the ability to make changes. So anyone can register as a user, but for the moment I'm only going to approve as Editors people who are taking an IR theory course with me. So yes, y'all have special powers, but they probably won't be exclusive special powers after the next time I teach this course. Do you find this valuable? |
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IneffableArtiste |
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sarahcaffey |
16. RE: Future of our Wiki
May 4 2009, 4:40 PM EDT
""y'all" ... ?"I love that word. Also yeah, that's basically what I meant; because we were mostly talking about future classes I didn't bother to specify, but for clarification I'm not suggesting that it just be open-edit to the world. Do you find this valuable? |
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ProfPTJ |
17. RE: Future of our Wiki
May 11 2009, 11:09 PM EDT
I actually think that the word "y'all" is one of the only meaningful contributions that the South has made to the English language -- a more contemporary form of the second person plural, something English hasn't had for a long while. See. e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_person. "Y'all" sounds better to my ears than "ye," which is the Old English version.
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IneffableArtiste |
18. RE: Future of our Wiki
May 12 2009, 12:28 AM EDT
It is too connotative-ly icky (unsettling) for me.
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