Overcoming Openness

From the StoryBase ...

TITLE: Overcoming Openness Author: WardCunningham Email: ward@c2.com

I run a server that is a little like storybase. To keep things simple I made it completely open. That is, anyone can modify any page any time. I figured it would last a few months before someone came in and trashed it.

Well it hasn't happened yet. In fact an interesting conversational style has evolved. One asks a question by stating part of an answer. Someone will notice the omission and fill in the rest. A third party may not even notice that a dialog is in progress.

It takes visitors a while to overcome their shyness and self doubt. Then they find themselves looking at a well known author's grammatical mistake and they think: gee I could fix that; yea, I'll just fix that; there, I fixed it; it reads much better now; I have value too.

There lies the hook. Closed pages may convince the reader that the writer is smart. But open pages can convince the reader that he himself is smart.

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Annotation by: Joseph Fox Email: joebec19@p4.rapidnet.com Date: Tue Nov 21 02:27:51 1995

And a reader who is smart, may discover the book has been open along. She/he never realized that the value in smartness lies in the ability to recognize openness.

Annotation by: eichin Date: Sun Dec 03 23:38:00 1995

I've seen a comment on the net to the effect that "The best way to get good information from the net is to post bad information -- you'll get corrected, vehemently, even abusively, but if you can put that aside, you've got the information you wanted far more effectively than just asking a question." Maybe it's something about the way we're schooled, that encourages us to make such corrections...

In the spirit of this pattern, I've tried to repair the misspelling of the title and a few other spelling mistakes. The WikiWikiWeb makes it easy to know what words are misspelled, but doesn't make the mistakes easy to find! --PaulChisholm

Yes, BadSpellersNeedHelpFromBrowsers. -- WardCunningham

Annotation: Firdyiwek Date: 10/29/97

The fear of falling into the abyss keeps us from recognizing the value of openness. I admire this little program for challenging us to fill the void. It has a fresh IHaventThoughtThroughAllTheProblemsYet feel to it. All power to it. AStoryAStory roared the crowd . . . well maybe later . . .

Annotation: Mark@louisville.edu Date: 11/29/98

What a wonderfully odd thing, this Wikiweb. So sprawling and hard to understand. I wonder if it could be used by writing students.

Without a doubt. In fact the use of the Wiki in Education could be the next really big thing in WikiEvolution?.

used by writing students -- yes, poetry and fiction writers are already using the http://WriteHere.net/ wiki.

See: CategoryComputerEducation CategoryEducation CategoryWiki CategoryStories