Thing 10 --Setting Up a Wiki

I thought I'd asked to be added to the wiki we're using for these Things, but it doesn't seem to be working. I did poke around for a while and look at some features. I like that you can compare different edits of the document, like here:

That's pretty handy, I suppose. It's because of features like this that I'm not sure why we won't use wikis in the circ department. I know there's a concern about unreliable information and all, but when it's this easy to look at who said what I think it'd be reasonably simple to clear up any misconceptions. In fact, sometimes the best way to make sure everyone's on the same page is to find out who isn't and how far off they really are, and this is a great way to do that.

Wikis, like other collaboration tools, are great ways to work on drafts of things and work toward consensus. I was hoping to find a way to prove that I do understand wikis by showing the one I'm already in, but it won't let you past the main page without logging in. This is a wiki that we use for a project here at the university called Londontown, which is an MMORPG.

On second thought, it's probably just as well that you can't get past the main page because all or most of us are under an NDA and I don't want anyone getting trouble. I thought about logging in and showing you a screenshot to show that my artwork and contributions are indeed up there, but that might be a bad idea. Just believe me.

Anyway, this team has up to I think 40-ish people on it, doing different things, with about 10-ish artists (including myself). The art lead (person in charge of art asset production) puts up links to the things that need to be done, and we pick and choose what we work on. Once we've completed a concept or a model, we upload our work under the link put forth by the art lead. We also share URL's, reference images, and names of useful resources with each other. Like with Googledocs, this means we don't always have to physically meet in order to get work done at this stage.

It's sort of different from the text-only wikis like the ones we're using as examples here, but the process is about the same. It's awesome, too, because getting that many busy college students together at one time is extremely difficult.

If I still need to add to the 23Things wiki in particular in order to prove that I get this whole wiki business, then it'll have to wait until I figure out how to get added. In the meantime, those are my thoughts on wikis and how awesomely useful they are based on outside experience.

Here's a big tortoise:

Oh, and why does Blogger always add images to the beginning of the post, no matter where your cursor is? I guess I could just type in the HTML myself but I don't feel like it. Bah.

Thing 9 --Collaboration Tools

The Googledoc to which I contributed was total nonsense at this point, so I hardly added anything. Fortunately, I've used Googledocs several times before; they're sort of the standard way of doing group projects, at least in the telecom department at IU. One of the first things we do when we have a long-term project between more than two people is set up a Googledoc. We use it a lot for design documents for games (this is the text description of a game's assets, rules, functionality, etc.) and it works really well for that. I just finished contributing to a Flash game last semester. Here's the portion I worked on (just the art assets, I don't know Flash). There's a whole other game that comes before this but I only really worked on this boss battle. (I designed the boss, that's about it.) Anyway, the point is that we did this mostly using Googledocs with the occasional in-person meeting.

(A disclaimer: that game's not all the way finished, but the rest of the problems belong to the Flash programmers, so don't blame me if it's kinda hard to play.)

Googledocs and the like work marvelously when time is at a premium. You can collaborate without having to show up at any particular time. I think committees could benefit from this sort of communication greatly if they use it effectively. Googledocs can deceive you into thinking you've made progress when all you've done is change some wording, but if you're on the lookout for that then it works quite well.

Another collaboration aid I love: Doodle. This lovely thing allows you to forward a link to a group of people which allows them to put their individual availability on a collective calendar. That way, at one glance you can see where your schedules intersect or conflict with other people's. It's a wonderful tool for scheduling. I think most anyone who works in groups that have to meet in person would find this beneficial. We use it all the time in my group projects.

Zoho and Googledocs don't look that different to me, although I didn't investigate too deeply. I've just developed this weird loyalty to Google that makes me inclined to use it. It's just that if you already have a Google account, you can use all its features without signing up for anything new. I already have at least two, so it's the easy way for me. The same is usually true of my collaborators in projects, so we go with Google.

Don't ask me what the Founding Fathers would think. Here's a kitten with a duck chicken: