Wiki+Practices

=**Wiki Practices** = //Best Practises and Q&A about this wiki.//

toc Wikis run best as "self organizing systems". Everyone works through it doing a little bits of work to keep everything "bite sized" and manageable. As we find better ways of doing things, important pages get updated and evolve. Some ideas just don't work, some just need a bit of refining to be great. This page is intended to house and track that discussion.

This is not by any means a standard to which everyone must adhere. The difference between a practice and a standard is that if you have a better way, just use it and you've changed your practice.

**NOTE:** Some items below may be out of date, given recent changes to wikispaces. //Feel free to correct factual errors. Use the DISCUSSION tab to ask questions and make comments.//

=**Debate and discussion** =

**Use the //discussion// page**
+ Built-into wikispaces.org to handle multiple threads + clearly visible in "recent changes" - no "sub threads" may make it difficult to delve into a problem, it would be nice to just post a link back to the parent discussion, but the format of the link with the '/' can mess up the code. - potentially far from element being commented upon - no visual editor, but the text-only coding works and there's a pop-up link there for the help.

**Comments in-line with your initials**
+ You see exactly what the comment is about - can get cluttered if many responses to a single point are needed.
 * in that case use an anchor there and link to a discussion as a footnote like [1]
 * You can //sign// any chunk of text with your name and the date/time by just adding four tilde (~) characters which produces something like this: 1219193831

=**Consensus Building** =

Debate and discussion helps build consensus. Wikis let people contribute //asynchronously// (i.e. when they can and are inspired to do so, rather than just when "meetings are called"). But they only work if people //want// to use them. So please try.

=**Research** =

The final report will be written collaboratively by all students. Issues you need to resolve together include:
 * how to attribute work to individual students?
 * how to ensure uniform and meaningful citation of references?
 * //other things...?//

**Feel free to add more info to this page.**