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<TITLE>Re: [OWW-SC] Private wikis?</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Hi All,<BR>
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My lab has a private wiki and we are also active users of the public wiki. A little history might be helpful...<BR>
When I started on OWW I mainly wanted a private wiki but because that option wasn’t around at the time, I started using the public wiki first. I’m glad it happened that way because If I’d had immediate access to the private wiki I might have just kept to myself and lurked around in my little Oregon world. Now I understand more about what OWW is about and I’ve become a believer. I find that I want to have as much as possible to the public wiki. For some new lab projects we are just posting everything in the open. For example, we are working on modeling a protein and my summer student posted his methods ( <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Victor_Wong).">http://openwetware.org/wiki/Victor_Wong).</a> My hope is that a colleague will get interested in the project and we will work together entirely in the open (so far, no luck on that but one can always hope....).<BR>
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Right now I’m hosting a class (using Reshma’s lovely template) and some of the other faculty here have expressed discomfort about posting, lectures, slides, schedules and so on. This is just what people are used to-- protecting and hiding everything. I explain how much I’ve learned from reading the other wikis and how great it is to contribute, not just unilaterally consume. Based on my experience, I think the more people use the public site the more comfortable they will be with the OWW mission of open sharing. So if OWW offers private wikis, then the labs ideally should also be active on the public side. I don’t know how you would enforce this though.<BR>
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I’m absolutely thrilled to be one of the test cases for the private wiki on OWW. We’ve decided to use the private wiki only for developing preliminary data in a format for publication. We are essentially working on drafts of papers with the intent that once the paper is published we will move that whole section onto the public side. The private wiki has transformed the way we communicate preliminary results in my lab. I can’t imagine doing work without it now. It would be a huge handicap. We were actively looking at a wikifarm (Sourceground) to host our private lab wiki when the private option became possible on OWW. <BR>
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In my opinion, having the private wiki option on OWW could ultimately advance the mission of sharing because otherwise some people might just go to wikifarms or use new operating systems with integrated wikis and drift away from OWW.<BR>
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-Maureen<BR>
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On 4/12/07 6:27 AM, "Barry Canton" <bcanton@mit.edu> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>How do we think the private wiki test is going? I'd be especially interested to hear from those with private wikis.<BR>
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I got a request on behalf of some MIT faculty behind the SMART program (Singapore-MIT alliance) who want to build their website on OWW. As expected they are put off by the lack of access control and are now wondering if it's possible to keep their entire site private. <BR>
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My feeling is that we shouldn't give out private wikis unless we think people are likely to use the public site significantly too.<BR>
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What do others think? Do we have enough info. to decide a general policy for granting private wikis? <BR>
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Barry<BR>
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