A Wiki idea

A Wiki idea

What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a website where users can add, edit or remove information, with minimal or no registration. Administration has the ability to revert pages on the website to its previous setting to minimize vandalism, editorial errors and disputes. The concept behind the wiki is instead of having one author write a book in three years, have 1000 author write the same book in a day.

Why a wiki for Guyana?

Guyana have no central source of information, we have many brilliant writers and historians dispersed around the world. A wiki would catalogue our history by the masses rather than the privileged few. The amount of information available out there can only be contained by a wiki, surely not by a book or a regular website.

What will a Wiki cost?

A wiki will not cost much more than a regular website. The software for a wiki is free open source. Of course you would have to have a domain name and hosting.

Who should own and run this wiki?

The Government of Guyana and the Ministry of Education should be responsible for the wiki, not because no one else can endure the cost of the technology nor have the technical skills necessary to set up the site. The GOG should run the wiki because they owe the people an existing frame work to catalogue our history, our people and our culture. A wiki also promotes the idea that no one owns information and inaccuracies does not last for long.

Why make this proposal on an open forum and not to the Ministry of Education?

I propose here mainly because this embodies the Socratic idea (not in the Nietzschean sense) that we know nothing and can learn only through the sharing of ideas, a true wiki form of thinking. I would welcome any criticism on my idea.

Will a wiki for Guyana work?

Consider this; wikipedia.com is more popular than youtube.com according to ComScore Media Matrix with about 155 million unique users per month. Wikipedia is among the 10 ten searched term for 2006 at google search.

The Ministry of Education can use its large faculty base for editing and also launch students writing competition. Schools with computer labs can let their students do online projects. The $100 laptop is knocking at our door for 2007 (laptop.org) which President Jagdeo promises to buy, oh and by the way laptop.org also has a wiki community. There are many more ideas that we can get from users of the wiki itself.

A wiki is a simple idea with infinite possibilities.

Asif Mohamed