Writing in ThreadMode Exercise:Weblogs and Wikis

Writing in ThreadMode Exercise

This exercise offers you practice in writing in ThreadMode and creating new topics (using wiki words) as a way to developing the wiki further. It opens into the WritingTheWikiProject, as we're trying to define issues, concepts, and points about writing on wikis and blogs that this class will be developing further over the semester.

Part 1: Stringing a thread

(re)read

Wide Open Spaces, Lamb
Social literacies: Some observations about writing and wikis, Ulises Ali Mejias
Wiki Epiphany, Delacour.

You may also draw on

Embrace the Wiki Way!, Matt Barton
or even have a look at how business is presenting wikis, such as Socialtext

Then, go to our page titled WideOpenSpaces and compose a response - in ThreadMode - to a topic, issue, or point in any of the readings. You're looking for a place in what Lamb (Mejias, Delacour) has written where you can elaborate, annotate, develop, provide variation on, counterpose, argue with, run against...topics and issues that the article brings up. All three of these articles are about insights and voices: add yours.

If other responses are present on the page when you arrive, place yours where it seems appropriate. If you are also responding to another's response, try to set yours off by indenting or setting it in italics. Refer to the StyleGuide for more advice. You can also respond to the related page WikiAsCulture.

Only one person can edit the page at a time. Let's hope you don't bump in to one another.

Do this in return visits: one today, one or two tomorrow and the next day, one or two later during the weekend, and a final check on Monday, 10 minutes before class. Start with a comment, return later to see what's changed, and add more. ThreadMode exchanges are not instantaneous so much as slow and considered, like SlowDiscussion.

Go for about 500 - 750 words or so, totaled over the weekend. Sign each entry you make with your WikiName.

Part 2: Creating new topics and moving to DocumentMode

Go back to and review the ThreadMode on WideOpenSpaces. Refer to guidelines for editing ThreadMode and RefactoringPages.

Three options

You can revise or re-edit your own or some of the other comments, draw on ThreadMode, DocumentMode, and RefactoringPages for strategies.
You can begin to refactor the thread into DocumentMode for this page.
You can find places to create WikiWords - new topics - in your own entries and in others. You can let some remain open ended. I'll seed the thread with one or two. You're free to remove them or ignore them.

Typically, you create new topics by jamming exiting words together, but it may be more fitting to add new words.
Don't force it. And you don't have to create new topics. Instead, you can contribute to new topics others have created.

For Wednesday, contribute 500 - 1000 words or so on 2 - 3 - 4 of the new topics. Keep a list of where you worked on your WikiName page. Your contributions can be short or long, in DocumentMode or ThreadMode or both.

notes

You can slip into Part 2 whenever you feel it's appropriate: creating WikiWords, adding to DocumentMode, or starting to refactor some of the exchange into DocumentMode.
You may bring in other readings, other topics on this wiki, or on blogs or elsewhere on the Web.
You write from the position of students of professional and creative writing. Your contribution to this wiki and the WritingTheWikiProject stems from that perspective. The reading is a starting point. But you define the topics that you individually and collectively want to address. Consult our StyleGuide.

Weblogs and Wikis : WritingInThreadModeExercise