On Feb 19, 2008 6:41 PM, Andrea Forte andrea.forte@gmail.com wrote:
I'm sure the majority of people don't know about the history tab... I've talked to educators and students within the past year who still didn't know about the *edit* tab. It's always surprising to me that wikis are still very new to most people. I tend to forget. :)
No kidding. I talked to a group of telecom professionals last night about Wikipedia and half of *them* didn't know about the edit tab. Of all the people you would expect....
I think it's always useful to at least ask about people's familiarity with the site, and if they have ever edited. A lot of the time people will have heard of wikipedia -- or heard about the controversies -- and may even know it's the "free encyclopedia anyone can edit" -- but really nothing beyond that. (You mean *anyone*? Really?) Sometimes people *assume* they know a lot more than they actually do because they've been reading news stories.
I wonder what things will look like a few years from now -- if WP will become something that most people know how works. -- phoebe