Why a wiki?

From Foreignliving

Revision as of 18:23, 21 July 2006

ForeignLiving is a guide containing helpful information for the benefit of Pakistanis/ Muslims living in foreign countries, or preparing to do so. All the content contained herein has been provided by volunteers, and is editable by anyone.

One may ask: what's a "wiki" anyway? And how reliable is this information? With such wealth of information available on various mailing lists, online communities and personal blogs, is there even a need for another site?

Do We Need a Wiki?

What's a Wiki?

A wiki is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change all the content. Many wikis allow completely unrestricted access so that people are able to contribute to the site without necessarily having to undergo a process of 'registration'. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing. The most famous example of a wiki is the online encyclopedia known as wikipedia.

Shortcomings of Mailing Lists, Online Communities & Personal Blogs

Traditional methods, such as mailing lists, online communities and blogs have three main drawbacks that this site aims to overcome:

• Scattered Information: Messages posted on online forums and mailing lists tend to be narrow in scope since they are usually in response to specific quesitons that were asked. In order to get a glimpse of the bigger picture, bits and pieces of information have to be looked through dozens of different messages/responses that were posted by different people, with each message having its own chain of responses.

• Difficulty in Searching: Many online communities maintain archives that the users are recommended to search through before posting a new question. The search feature works by looking for specific words within messages. If the information you were looking for was simply phrased differently, it will not show up in the search results.

• Inability to Build on Previous Work: In general, no single message or post is comprehensive in itself. When others try to pitch in with the missing bits, they must do so in the form of new messages, which leads to the afore-mentioned problems. Incidentally, people's personal blogs don't suffer from this so much, since the owner of the blog has the chance consolidate information from different sources and update it over time, thus providing everything at one place. However, whereas mailing lists and communities are able to take advantage of input from hundreds or even thousands of individuals, a blog is usually dependent on a single person. Not only would such blogs be limited to the creator's own personal interests, as the amount of information increases, it rapidly becomes impractical for a single person to manage a comprehensive archive, and it may take content from different people's blogs to form a complete picture. In short, various blogs cannot "build" on the contents of each other.

A wiki, on the other hand, facilitates maintaining a consolidated "all in one place" information pool, while retaining the advantage of a large number of contributors (publicly editable). One may ask "If anyone can edit the content, how reliable would it be?" For reliability concerns, read below...

Why is this Site a Wiki?

Using a wiki offers the following advantages:

• Updation of the website is not dependent on a single person or a small group of persons, but can potentially benefit from input from the entire community. For concerns regarding the reliability of content, please read the section below.

• Information is maintained in the form of articles, where consolidated information can be found at one place, and every subsequent editor can "build on" the work of the previous. It also facilitates rapid inclusion of new content in a haphazard manner under the assumption that someone else will come along at a later time and take care of the organization and formatting etc.

How Reliable is the Information on ForeignLiving?

The open philosophy of most wikis--of allowing anyone to edit content--does not ensure that editors are well intentioned. Additionally, even well-intentioned users are bound to inadvertently add incorrect information to the wiki page. As a result, wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them, and so they come with a range of tools that can be used to monitor "Recent Changes", and restore the content to a previous state. Most updates are scrutinized by the administrator, and in extreme cases, the admin can take measures to limit access by allowing only registered users to make changes.

Although the danger of inaccurate, misleading or obsolete information exists in any mailing list, online community or blog, it is in fact one of the advantages of a wiki in that such problems can be detected and corrected quickly and easily. However, content on this site--as with any "unofficial" site--should be taken as a reasonably accurate starting point, without guarantees of any kind. Sensitive information, especially those involving monetary information like fees and bank accounts, should always be double-checked from an official source.

How Can You Help?

• By checking out this website, and making changes, wherever you feel something can be improved on. You can simply dump new content without worrying about formatting, sturcture or grammar, leaving it for others to build on your contribution.

• By spreading word about this website so that potential beneficiaries find out about this knowledge-pool. Send messages to mailing lists, but be careful not to spam.

• By linking it from your websites and personal homepages so that it shows up higher in search engine results.

You can leave feedback and suggestions at the Feedback, Suggestions and Contributions page.