The Wiki – A Self Reflection on our Lab Activity

Using a wiki to research and produce data on crowdsourcing was a somewhat challenging experience, and though it may have some benefits, my overall experience producing data for others to see was an experience that that I found difficult. Since we were researching this topic together in the same room, the experience is of course much different from the lone researcher, because collectively we could decide on what data was reliable and what data wasn’t in person, and not with unknown individuals over the web.

Since the wiki is powered by easy to use HTML Markup language software, users from all over the world without any background in HTML coding can add their own information to the subject. This provides a much wider array of ideas, and often there are enough ‘good people’ out there to narrow it down and filter out only the necessary information. However, in my opinion this is where the benefits stop.

Personally, I found that we all had to agree on what was being produced. As it relates to style and depth, we as individuals all have different tastes and opinions on what information we gather, and it was sometimes hard to come to a consensus. And that is exactly the problem with a wiki source.

This project completely mirrored what a wiki site is: a bunch of people with different opinions on what’s absolutely correct and what’s relevant. Like our project did, the wiki undergoes constant change. This may not directly relate to its content, but more so to the style in which the data is being represented and what order it’s being presented in. Collaboratively, it’s easier to produce the final result but that final result is usually never agreed upon. Being in a small group, we were lucky enough to come a consensus on our final result.

Unfortunately, the real world isn’t as accepting.