Still more on the wiki

While working on our wiki over the past few days, I've been thinking back to the Marxwiki we built for KF's course on Marxism & Cultural Studies (I want to say that one or two others of you may also have been in that class, so please put in your two cents if that's the case), which was a traditional wiki modeled along the lines of wikipedia, with encyclopedic, interlinking entries on everything from "Base and superstructure" to "Fanfiction."

Relative to that wiki experience, I do feel authorized to say that our wiki has been quite a success. Not that the Marxwiki didn't have its merits -- there are a hell of a lot of entries, and it's probably the best repository/proof of our knowledge and exactly how much ground we covered over the course of the semester. I've even gone back to the Marxwiki and found it a useful resource when some of the authors and ideas included there have been covered in other of my classes. However, as I believe I mentioned in class back when we were first brainstorming ideas for our own wiki, writing entries there was always a chore, and moreover, it felt really competitive. E.g., "I've got to create the Adorno/Horkheimer pages before anyone else does, or I'm never going to get these ten entries done." With this wiki, there's more than enough space to wander and create that I've never once felt like I needed to "stake a claim" over any particular idea or narrative territory, and better still, working on this wiki has always been fun. Even when it's felt daunting or anarchic or I've zero idea what's going on, once I sat down and started writing and linking things together I always had a great time doing it. So although the reader/critic's verdict may still be out on our wiki, I think that from the creator's standpoint it really couldn't have gone better.