Unofficial v official
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[edit] Reasons for the Wiki to remain independent from GSLIS
- Freedom - students can anonymously express their opinions, without fear of reprisal or fear that the school will 'turn it off'
- Deniability - school can deny any involvement in the discussions and actions on the wiki. If information on the wiki is incorrect, it doesn't affect the school directly. If the wiki is spammed or attacked or used for obscene material, etc the school is protected
- Diversity - Wiki can support broader context of users - beyond GSLIS, alumns, etc. to all web users - will GSLIS really allow _anyone_ to edit the wiki if it is official?
- Support - more crap for user services and application support personel to have to maintain
- Security - Wiki's can get spammed, etc and can create a headache for administrators
- Transfer of Ownership - transferring the content, domain and ownership to GSLIS will mean the wiki will be offline for at least a day and also is a real pain in the ass to do - exacerbated by the overhead costs incurred by going through CITES to register the domain.
- Cost - registering the domain is more expensive through CITES - something like $150 a year for a domain with CITES vs ~$5 with Yahoo (current registrar)
[edit] Reasons for the Wiki to be moved under GSLIS control
- Greater resources
- It is already being used for pseudo-official purposes (courses, etc).
- Potential fracturing of community content into official/unofficial if GSLIS decides to make GSLIS.net or something.
- Better support
- Better infrastructure
- Cheaper - we don't pay, GSLIS pays
[edit] Thoughts and Opinions
[edit] Ingbert's Thoughts
The whole point of the wiki is to create a place where students and others can post content without having to worry about whether it adheres to the Univerity rules about what kind of information departments can post on the web, whether there might be repercussions, whether someone might try to control the content, etc. It offers a freedom and an opportunity to be frank, which a school-controlled wiki does not--because you are contributing to school-sanctioned content. Any attempt to make it official will reduce the contribution rate, and will affect the types of contributions that people feel comfortable making, simply due to the changes social context.
That being said, I think there is a case to be made that there might be value in having a school-sponsored wiki in addition to the unofficial wiki, despite the fact that there will likely be problems with "fracturing of community content" mentioned above. For instance, Chip mentioned he would like to have a wiki which describes the activities of the Inquiry Research Group and their iLabs project, because the focus of the group is dynamic, and the only way to reflect it accurately is via a community editing process, which is not a possibility when everything has to be sent through Marlo, and even if it were, would be an unfair burden to place on her shoulders. Thus, GSLIS Groups might be granted their own wiki pages, which they could decide whether to make publicly editable, or restricted just to group members. By having such wiki pages hosted on the school's servers, it creates an environment that indicates that what is on those pages is the official word on what those projects are about.
(However, if GSLIS does decide to create their own wiki (or wikis), then they should keep certain considerations in mind.)
I'd like to make clear, that this is a trust issue for me, but it is not that I don't trust GSLIS; I do, at least I trust most of the people who make up the school right now, especially most of the senior administrators. However, I do not trust the University Administration to always make good choices, and I do not trust the legislature which makes the laws which the University is forced to abide by. And I think having a locus of communication and organization that is independant of the University is invaluable for the GSLIS community as a whole: students,, staff, and alumni. And as soon as content has been published under the purvue of the University, then exporting content to private venues could become problemmatic, so it is not as simple as just moving it away from GSLIS in case of a crackdown.
Thus, I am in favor of keeping the UGWiki unofficial as per its original conception, but am more than happy to have significant interlinking between whatever wiki or wikis the school decides to create and the UGWiki, a capability most wikis, Mediawiki included, support, and a capability which is engine-independant.
I am also more than willing to see the UGWiki used for pseudo-official purposes. Let Instructors use the wiki for class content. Let administrative notices be posted on the wiki. Let current events, upcomming lectures, etc., etc. be posted here. I'm happy to see the wiki used for that kind of content, especially if it the best tool for the job. Just do not expect the students to necessarily maintain those pages. If you want some kind of guarantee that the infrastructure will continue to exist, realize that we have financial constraints, and the money needs to come from somewhere. We are happy to accept donations. I do not think we should become an official service.
--Ifloyd2 20:15, 13 Oct 2005 (MST)
[edit] Cameron's Thoughts
I agree with Ingbert, especially the trust issue. It is not that I don't trust GSLIS - infact I think they have every intention of trying to maintain the status quo. However, the Wiki would be operating within the larger University context which can cause all sorts of trouble as far as I am concerned.
What I see happening now is that the Wiki is truly becoming something owned and shared by the community. Before, when it was sharing my personal homepage's bandwidth and space (which in turn was borrowed from someone else), I think there was a certain sense of individual ownership - I controlled the wiki. That always was a little unsettling to me as I was pulled in two directions. One - the GSLIS community and my desire to support them. Two - my friend who had graciously donated the server space and bandwidth getting begrudged by the traffic and maintenance issues (getting the Wiki to work on my site caused him no end of headaches). So, I was always trying to balance these two concerns. Now that the wiki is on its own - I don't feel caught in the middle and also don't feel that I have to 'make decisions' regarding the wiki.
Now, I know that this is not really comparable to the situation is GSLIS were to take over the management of the Wiki, but I think some parallels can be drawn. For example - John will have to balance the demands of the University and his role as Dean with the community of Wiki users and contributors.
Another issue is one of priorities. Where the Wiki is not something I actively manage every day, it is a high priority for me when something goes wrong. Given the overworked support staff we have, how much of a priority will the Wiki be for them? I feel this is thrusting unwanted work on the support staff - why should they have to maintain it? As equally valid a question as 'why should we have to pay for it?' as has been asked by some.
I dunno, I'll try to add more ideas later. I just wanted to start fleshing out my position.
- Cameron
