An Egyptian tale

Tristan got very excited yesterday when I told him I was reading the Cathedral and the Bazaar .A seminal work for any Linux gurus he chirped with glee, and preceded to run upstairs to see if he still had his hard copy.

I should tell you about Tristan. Tristan is my beau of 5 years. We live together. We have rats that he has come to love as his own. Tristan is also what one might call a old fashioned socialist in the open source web elite. He is currently a network engineer, as he says he can't be a software engineer anymore because he becomes a horrible person who never leaves the computer. He does a lot of collaborative free software work. (If I Google him then most of the entries are emails he's posted helping people with solutions.) He doesn't like social media. He once joined facebook for 3 days while he had an interview with Facebook. Then he deleted himself.  I think he secretly would rather be a wizard in the big cathedral but he does a pretty good job at being in the bazaar. As he puts it, he likes to pop in on a smoke cloud, do his bit to help and then pop out again. In fact he has contributed coding to lots of projects. It turns out he is also a wiki contributor. So this makes for some interesting dynamics in the house, as he's the techie wiz and I am the one engaging and exploiting technology.

Cautionary tale alert!!!

He once made up a rule for backgammon by adding it to the GNU backgammon programming ..., which for many years went undetected.  The Egyptian rule came from a friend of his who learnt how to play in backgammon with Egyptians who had their own rules. It was added to the programme so they could play backgammon in the office adhering to these alternative rules. It was a simple thing, not intended to do harm.  It's still in the FAQ but you can't play it anymore. It took years for someone to question whether in fact the rule existed and to highlight that it was cheating (hence the name for the cheating Egyptian trained friend). In fact it is disputed in this wiki under 'Five Checker rule’. It will be a legendary tale that we tell our children!

So what does this tell me about the uses wiki? They are amazing, but indeed, one still needs to approach them with caution as with any piece of published work. They can provide a wonderful arena for freedom and collaboration, but you have to take the steps to engage. For me personally, I am not sure yet that I have utilised their full potential


Reading

Augar, N., Raitman, R., Zhou, W., Teaching and learning online with Wikis (accessed 8^th March 2011)

Blogs & wikis:technologies for Enterprise applications? The Gilbane Report: Volume 12, number 10(accessed 8^th March 2011)

7 Things you should know about wikis Educause. (accessed 8^th March 2011)

Ferris, S.P., and Wilder,H. Uses and potentials of wikis in the classroom  (accessed 8^th March 2011)

Fountain, R. (2007) ,Wiki Pedagogy  (accessed 8^th March 2011)

Raymond, E.S. (2000) The Cathedral and the Bazaar  (accessed 8^th March 2011)

Lamb, B., (2004) Wikis – ready or not (accessed 8^th March 2011)