Evelien's Dagboek

Wikis

There are systems on the Internet, in which users can make contributions. An example are the comments in a weblog. If you enter a comment to this posting, it will become part of my website. Another example is Amazon, where you can add reviews of books and records.

But it can go much further than this! There are sites, that are completely filled with contributions from users. That is what they call a ‘wiki’. I had never heard of it until I stumbled onto Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, completely filled by contributions from users!

It is amazing that this kind of system works. Who wants to contribute? Why would anyone do that? Is there any quality control? What about vandalism? I don’t know, but it works for sure. There is already a whole lot of good, useful information in there…

So I went on to look at some more wikis. They are not all as successful as the Wikipedia. At Wikibooks they are trying to create not one book, but a complete library. I went looking for Dutch books, but there are not many in there yet. The Dutch users will have to fill this gap. Anyone can take part. You can just surf there and start writing!

I like the idea, so I gave Wikibooks a small start for a tutorial on physics in Dutch. Maybe I will continue this effort one day, or maybe someone else will finish off the book. Only time will tell…

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