"The Internet disorganizes information for you, so you can organize it for yourself - alone or with friends."
RU Sirius, www.10zenmonkeys.com
2A: About Social Bookmarking
The essence of social bookmarking sites is this: individuals collaborate, over time, to determine
tags (keywords) that best describe some Web-based content.
There is some parallel with subject cataloging done by libraries. Here an individual analyzes and determines standard subject terms that best describe the main focus of some content, such as a book. Catalogers select terms from a thesaurus (or list) of standard terms.
Sites like del.icio.us allow users to individually identify tags that are meaningful to them for describing some content found on the Web. In the process, you may also view a variety of tags that other people have applied to the same content. The process of tagging Web content is enriched by collaboration.
Social bookmarking sites also feature tag clouds. This is a visual display of tags that increases the font size of the most popular tags, as shown in the illustration below. These can be viewed for individual collections or for the site as a whole.
Like browsing by subject in the library catalog, these sites also facilitate discovery of new sources. Users of social bookmarking sites can:
View all of the content for a particular tag that has been identified by other users of the software.
Subscribe to particular tags so that you are updated on new content that uses these tags.
Search the entire collection of bookmarks. This reduces the universe of what you search from the entire Web to content that others have identified as valuable.
Furl also privately archives a complete copy of each page that a user bookmarks, making it accessible even if the original content is modified or removed.
A wiki is a website that allows visitors to add, remove, and otherwise edit and change content, typically without the need for registration. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This simplicity makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing.
The wiki software also facilitates discussion. As the illustration below shows, one tab at the top of an article links to a discussion forum for that topic. Individuals with differing opinions can offer them here. The wiki article also includes a history of the editing done on that topic by various individuals.
2C: Using Wikis
The most well-known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, a free Web-based encyclopedia that is developed collaboratively by users. This Wikipedia is written in English. Started in 2001, it currently contains more than 1.5 million articles. Many other Wikipedias in various languages are also available.
Wikipedia does not require users to register in order to edit the content. You must have an account to create a new article. However it is often difficult or impossible to know who wrote or edited a particular article. Most writers do not include their names and the list of edits shows the login name that a person selected when registering for an account.
Because so much of the content is anonymous, there is active debate over the value of information supplied by Wikipedia. Many instructors view it as a good source for background information on a topic, but not one to be cited as a reliable reference in a term paper or other academic project. See Reliability of Wikipedia for more information.
Activity
Try a search in del.icio.us for: video editing tutorial
Look at one of the most popular sites listed in the search results.
