One of the great stengths of weblogs is reverse chronology, that latest posts come first, so there is always something new at the top of the pile, driving the conversation. Linked together with other bloggers they offer a great way of getting an overview of what's going on, but, however well organised the archives are, it weblogs are not ideally suited to pulling together themes over a period of time.
That's why I have launched the Mediations wiki, which aims to be a way of collecting useful articles and posts under a series of themes in a structured and accessible way. It is primarily aimed at students studying my courses in media ethics and the impact of social softwares on PR practice but I hope there will be material here to interest a wider audience.
The idea of setting up a wiki was inspired by Richard Bailey, who runs the excellent PR Studies site. Richard has now launched the PR Books wiki which is already an incredibly rich resource for any PR student. I think it started out as a reading list but by the time it went online this morning you will see that it is an awful lot more.
Richard may have begun by thinking of ways to help his students at Leeds Metropolitan University but he has produced something that will help everyone studying the subject. I have watched it grow over the couple of weeks and I know how much work he has put into it; as others have remarked one of the most striking things about the social softwares is the amount of thought and effort some people are prepared to invest in creating content that they will then share for no tangible reward.
Well done, Richard, and many thanks.
Fantasic and a brilliant idea. This shows how we can offer blog posts to help in research and education. It is a great concept and I have already spent ages going through it.
Posted by: David Phillips FCIPR | September 01, 2006 at 09:31 AM
What a terrific initiative, Philip. A great resource.
Posted by: Neville Hobson | September 01, 2006 at 12:33 PM
Well done Philip - looks really interesting. And what a coincidence: I've been working on a wiki about web 2.0 myself for a new media workshop I'm doing for our students here in Ghent (viz www.cmnieuwemedia.wikispaces.com - mind you: work in progress!). Unfortunately (in a way, that is) it's in Dutch... :-) But still: just goes to show wikis are on the up!
Posted by: Serge | September 02, 2006 at 01:00 PM
Thanks, everyone. Yes, Serge, there does seem to be groundswell behind wikis; David has been trying to encourage people to use them for a while and his PR Bibliography is just one of his valuable initiatives.
I hope this is OK but I have added your wiki to a test vesion of a wiki to support EuroBlog 2007 (http://euroblog.pbwiki.com). Details to follow (email me if you want a password, it would be good to have sentence or two od description in Dutch and English).
Posted by: Philip Young | September 02, 2006 at 01:31 PM