A democracy of wikis
By Joe Di Pasquale, Founder, CollegeWikis.com
Published on Thursday, April 5, 2007
To the Editor:
We launched the Dartmouth Wiki because several Dartmouth students e-mailed us asking for one. CollegeWikis.com is a team of current and recent students whose only intention is to provide other college students with a useful and informative resource. Our wikis have been well-received at schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton. We are not profiting from the website.
The Dartmouth Wiki creates a trusted network by using a facebook.com-like system of only allowing students with an
@dartmouth.edu e-mail address to register and ask questions, thus ensuring accurate, high-quality and relevant information.
There is value in both official and unofficial information. We have modeled our wiki after Wikipedia, an unofficial yet extremely useful resource. We should welcome the diversity of both an "official" and "unofficial" wiki, especially when the official site plans to censor postings it doesn't approve of and is still in the "formative" stages. As the article stated, "this page will be approved by the administration and the information on the site will be filtered" ("SA to create 'Dartmouth wiki,'" April 2).
The Student Assembly telling students not to use a website is reminiscent of a government that tries to censor its citizens, and I hope Dartmouth students will not stand for it. CollegeWikis.com purposely allows students to post about whatever they want, not to be monitored by others who decide what information to allow.
If I were a student, I would be disappointed that the Assembly 1) thought they could dictate what websites I should go to, and 2) told me not to use something that could be of great value when they have no viable alternative. I would be even more disappointed if my classmates followed that order.