I've been Wiki'd

Wikipedia - What an excellent on-line resource library it is, I find I do not use it often, but when I do, I find I can always locate what the information I am looking for.

So yesterday, I decided I would be Wiki'd and add an section myself that I felt was sadly missing, that of EDAs. Having written a blog on the subject and found no entry in 'Wiki' (for short) relating to Enterprise Device Assistant's, so I decided to give it a go.

When thinking about "How do I CRUD Wiki without drawing a backlash upon myself", I found it very difficult to find a simple top ten of Do's and Dont's, mainly because as the site suggestions ... Go on ... Give it a go ..., I was very nervous of submitting something which did not first require an authorised review or any form of moderation of the contents I wanted to submit.

Once I came to this understanding of the 'Wiki' frame of mind, I began to edit. The first thing I noticed was, you really need to find a parent for the subject your about to submit before you begin, otherwise I would imagine, a new topic is just left hanging as a orphan (No branch for my subject to hang upon).

To explain a little further, I wanted to fill a hole in Wiki's content in relation to what an 'EDA' (Enterprise Digital Assistant) is, this lead me to search for 'EDA' which I knew would return nothing related to the missing subject I was now seeking to add.

This did however return 'EDA' as a menu of items which also share the same letters (EDA) but were totally unrelated to mobile computing, so this became the parent for my first born topic i.e.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDA

Now the idea of editing this page, which is a Parent to many children i.e. 'Eating Disorders Association', 'Event Driven Architecture' etc.. made me more than a little uncomfortable. Being a database developer and understanding the importance of relationships between Parents and children and the ease of which a Child can become an Orphan if you don't maintain a good relationship between the two, I was shocked to say the least at how simple the process was, once I got my head around the mark-up language which is very much like HTML with a speech impediment.

So, I went ahead and added my editions which were to add a new 'EDA' to the list of unrelated subjects already in the list (as the Parent), which was:

"Enterprise Digital Assistant ^[2], an electronic portable device which can include some of the functionality of a computer coupled with a Data Capture device, a image or linear barcode reader, a RFID Reader, a cellphone and a camera"

Then I added the subject itself, which was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Digital_Assistant

Leaving to one side the simplicity of it all, the only issue which concerned me, was when I was allowed to create references to pages which did not yet exist ... Links to no where. So being of a good nature (not wishing to draw the attention of others to insight a nasty comment), I removed these links to other topics which I had assumed would already be available within 'Wiki', but in fact, they two pointed out, yet more holes in Wiki's content.

Be Warned!, while I found the experience enjoyable, I get the horrible feeling I am going to regret been Wiki'd, mainly because I can see how a single subject can grow so simply and generate requirements for further additional subjects, which themselves would leave your head spinning as you go around and around where you could become trapped in a never ending cycle of adding content to Wikipedia and amending your entries until your old and gray.

The only reason I say this is, because you submit your subject and you have two choices, you can avoid creating Orphans (as I choose) or be very Wiki'd and have lots of Children, but you could end up being Old and Gray by the time you feed all these Children with even the most basic of bear contents.

I would encourage anyone to give it a try and edit an existing subject, but creating new subjects, I would suggest is for those who are just plain Wiki'd.

Anyway, if you interested, check out the new addition at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Digital_Assistant

I am hoping it will draw others in, to add and edit more and more content on the subject of [b]EDAs[/b] in business.

Yours
Brendon McLoughlin of Tasc Software