Read the Novel, Then Update the Wiki

[Dave Monroe]

"Read the Novel, Then Update the Wiki," City of Warts,
12/6

The world of wikis
I must express my disappointment with one false note
in Chris Thompson's otherwise informative article.
Thompson states that Tim Ware "is coordinating the
global Wikipedia project to annotate, categorize, and
investigate every single detail in the novel." The
title gets the terminology right; this sentence does
not.

Wikipedia is a specific project, only one example of
the software type known as the wiki. (To be sure, it
is today the largest wiki in the world.) It was
launched in January 2001, but wiki concepts and
implementations had been in existence several years
before that. Ward Cunningham, who invented the word,
traces his software back to a HyperCard project in the
late 1980s.

Wikipedia has its own community behaviors and official
policies, some of which are not so appropriate for Mr.
Ware's project. (Read the Wikipedia policy page called
"No Original Research," and you'll easily imagine
cases when the Pynchon Wiki will need the exact
opposite.) The Pynchon Wiki contributors are still
working out these issues, which is only to be expected
since the "p-wiki" is such a new development.

It is exciting to see the wiki concept evolve beyond
the "killer app" which made it famous.

Blake Stacey, Boston, Massachusetts

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2007-01-03/news/letters.html

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