''From the StoryBase ...'' ---------- TITLE: Overcoming Openness Author: WardCunningham Email: ward@c2.com I run a server that is a little like storybase. To keep things simple I made it completely open. That is, anyone can modify any page any time. I figured it would last a few months before someone came in and trashed it. Well it hasn't happened yet. In fact an interesting conversational style has evolved. One asks a question by stating part of an answer. Someone will notice the omission and fill in the rest. A third party may not even notice that a dialog is in progress. It takes visitors a while to overcome their shyness and self doubt. Then they find themselves looking at a well known author's grammatical mistake and they think: gee I could fix that; yea, I'll just fix that; there, I fixed it; it reads much better now; I have value too. There lies the hook. Closed pages may convince the reader that the writer is smart. But open pages can convince the reader that he himself is smart. -------- Annotation by: Joseph Fox Email: joebec19@p4.rapidnet.com Date: Tue Nov 21 02:27:51 1995 And a reader who is smart, may discover the book has been open along. She/he never realized that the value in smartness lies in the ability to recognize openness. -------- Annotation by: eichin Date: Sun Dec 03 23:38:00 1995 I've seen a comment on the net to the effect that "The best way to get good information from the net is to post bad information -- you'll get corrected, vehemently, even abusively, but if you can put that aside, you've got the information you wanted far more effectively than just asking a question." Maybe it's something about the way we're schooled, that encourages us to make such corrections... ---- In the spirit of this pattern, I've tried to repair the misspelling of the title and a few other spelling mistakes. The WikiWikiWeb makes it easy to know what words are misspelled, but doesn't make the mistakes easy to find! --PaulChisholm Yes, BadSpellersNeedHelpFromBrowsers. -- WardCunningham ---- Annotation: Firdyiwek Date: 10/29/97 The fear of falling into the abyss keeps us from recognizing the value of openness. I admire this little program for challenging us to fill the void. It has a fresh IHaventThoughtThroughAllTheProblemsYet feel to it. All power to it. AStoryAStory roared the crowd . . . well maybe later . . . ------ Annotation: Mark@louisville.edu Date: 11/29/98 What a wonderfully odd thing, this Wikiweb. So sprawling and hard to understand. I wonder if it could be used by writing students. Without a doubt. In fact the use of the Wiki in Education could be the next really big thing in WikiEvolution. ---- ''used by writing students'' -- yes, poetry and fiction writers are already using the http://WriteHere.net/ wiki. ---- See: CategoryComputerEducation CategoryEducation CategoryWiki CategoryStories