Understanding the Fundamentals of Wikis

The Wiki Styles of Creation

When I first began using the Wiki page I was very confused and nervous about what exactly I was supposed to do for this blogging assignment even though I used to have a page similar to this before. After creating my user name and mini profile I was doing my best to navigate through the tools that were listed such as:

• searching information
• editing your profile
• changing font size
• being able to post information under my page

Using Wikis really made me think about Wikipedia because it seems almost just alike with the editing and changing of information only it’s a more condensed and a personalized version.

Dr. Flynn created an initial page and gave us directions to follow for creating the wiki pages successful. I noticed that you could go onto any of your classmates’ pages and edit or give suggestions on their pages for things you thought were creative. Although I had some trouble searching topics of interest to me, I found it using this site was very time consuming and filled with features that I never imagined before.

According to the WikiProject Medicine article, it stated that it was a place for editors to improve their medical and health content on Wikipedia so that they are able to collaborate and discuss things.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine Everyone is welcome to join in regardless of your qualifications. In my opinion that seemed very unusual to me because this particular articles involves discussing medical and health information that are key components in people everyday lives. 

A user being able to check out the organization goals is pretty reasonable, but the fact that anyone can edit or change information that is already posted is not safe. I do not think this is a good resource to receive health information like this from an organization.

When organizations create pages through Wiki they are basically allowing everybody to post and change any type of information that they would like on their pages. This is a easy way for discussions to get started and ideas to be exchanged through the pages. All of the ideas from people are updated on the same page, so individuals are aware of everything this is going on in the Wiki World. I know for me Wiki became very overwhelming because you were allowed to personalize everything that you want and the many features listed such as discussions, creating content, sharing files and editing documents was a lot for me.

Health organizations can benefit from the Wiki social media platform to a certain degree because all the information that is being released by their organizations reaches millions of users.They are able to post

• organization events
• short term and long term goals
• rewards
• feedback for ways to help build their brand
• and promotion of ideas to help their organization grow

Although, wiki is not a creditable source for seeking health information it is good for allowing users to communicate as a whole. When you want to make a change to a wiki page it is able to be done quickly, fast and in a hurry which benefits health organizations if they are trying to update and promote upcoming health events. This wiki tool can be very productive in some ways to users and companies.

One health organization that I discovered on Wiki was Relay for Life of Second Chance. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Relay_For_Life_of_Second_Life . This wiki site is the signature fundraising activity for Relay for Life for the American Cancer Society that is an overnight event for people of all ages to participate in. This annual activity takes places the second life in July of each year and volunteers join teams to have fun while they are also fundraising and raising awareness for the cures of cancer. This activity page has several years of history listed of the Second Chance events donations and the different type of participation from individuals such as:

• walking laps
• being avatars 
• or running laps

 I thought it was a very good idea that this page gave a very detailed overview of what this event represent and provided a most frequently asked question section for users that had concerns. The last time this page was updated was January 2012 almost one and half year ago from today. This site has a very clear layout and a lot of the information is bullet pointed for users to easily follow the information they have listed. There are also several videos and pictures posted for people to see what this event truly entitles with raising true awareness and money for curing cancer.

Overall, I think Wiki is a very creative method to get information out to people especially when you are trying to introduce a topic of your interest and want others input on that topic. This feature allows you to be very interactive with other users and edit any information that you would like. However, I would not choose this social media platform for health information because it is just not trustworthy enough for me. 

If an organization has the time to create a wiki page for advertisement or promotion of events then I think it is a terrific idea to use but, providing health facts is not very beneficial. In my opinion, Wiki does have a pretty unique feature of providing and being able to update any type of information that you would like.