Your LobSim Org Home (Wiki) Page

The main home page of each LobSim org will function as a wiki for the organization. A wiki is different from a blog. A blog gathers new information in reverse chronological order. A blog is good at establishing and maintaining a relationship between a writer and his/her audience. A wiki archives and manages information. I allows visitors to add, edit, and change material. A blog can be seen as taking the place of a bulletin board where a wiki takes the place of a project binder. (source: http://mplictechtrain.blogspot.com/2007/04/what-is-difference-between-blog-and.html)

You will help your fellow staff members to construct and maintain a knowledge base concerning your organization that will begin on the first page of your org's LobSim site. At the top of each org home (wiki) page I have posed the question: What is your (leader's) stance on the four bill topics. Start with possible answers to this question. In this way, you will construct a knowledge base by submitting data to the page that follows the personal and political point of view of your particular org and its leader. The information that you add has to be consistent, topical, and reliable.

The first stage of making this knowledge base is to have all the members submit information that appears to be a part of an answer to the question: What is Xs stance on . . . . The second stage is to take that information and organize it into fields and categories, creating new pages if necessary. And the third stage is to revise the information already in the categories and add more information.

You start this process by going onto your org page, selecting Edit this Page (in the top right corner), posting your information under the bill topic categories that have already been placed into the page, and then hit Save (again in the top right corner). Do this for every submission you make. Initially add a line space between your submission and the others on the page. Changes to the page will be logged in Recent Site Activity in the left frame of each page.

You must try to detach your ego from your writing on a wiki. Someone will be going onto the page changing, reordering, and/or eliminating what you have written. This is the nature of the work in a wiki. You must do this kind of editing and it will be done to your writing, too. Get used to it and use it to your advantage. Your writing will resist changes by others if you do it in an exemplary fashion. Simple as that. Working in a wiki is a matter of the crowd coming to a consensus. Note: Each change to the home (wiki) org page is recorded in the history section of each page.