Wiki Song

Wiki Tools: History of this page: http://c2.com/wiki/history/WikiSong/

Is there a campfire around which the wiki community sits? And especially, how might kindred spirits find such their way to it?

Thinking about sitting around a campfire - how might the wiki community sum up WikiNature? Not literally in a song, but think of a song rather than a manifesto.

If WikiNature were a song, what would the lyrics be? The lyrics would be editable and evolving.

The visitor journal here and WardsWiki features the UniversalEditButton? are known wiki promoters, let's find each other and tend the campfire. (NoteToSelf?:See site notice at the website)

For most communities, activities online are more like a ticker tape, or stream and for us it is like building sand castles. RecentChanges is the original stream - it is the visible work of a particular wiki. The wikis activity is transparent.

Four principles suggested by WardCunningham:

A wiki is a place where strangers can quickly develop mutual trust in the process of creating something that has lasting value.

Wiki is a kind of technical tool, and technical questions arise: is RecentChanges a necessary feature? Must one be able to link to pages before they are created? Is it important to allow anonymous/account-free contributions?

As a tool designed to support innovation and structural tinkering, wiki resists being boxed in, defined, or limited. Any proposed "rule" invites the suggestion of an exception.

Like much wiki activity, this kind of discussion and deliberation is valuable, but the value lies more in the process than in the end result.

People:

PageName as HashTag: #WikiSong

Host this at http://Wiki.org when ready.

Reference:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3583.html

Past WikiSong identity:

Fun to see this new sense of the phrase WikiSong. We had used it at the 2006 RecentChangesCamp to mean, essentially, group lyrical improv. Perhaps a misnomer, since it relied more on simultaneous editing than any traditional wiki characteristic.

But I would certainly guess that if WikiNature were a song, the lyrics would be editable and evolving.

I will hunt for the WikiMonster? lyrics that we wrote back then. I do remember "Risk your ass, get him pissed, then you'll be on his list. That's if you've got an asterisk."

remnants here: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20080114052339/http://2006.recentchangescamp.org/WikiSong

WikiContentGenerationProcess WikiDesignPrinciples