Wikispaces

1. Introduction

This page is an evaluation of "Wikispaces", a service intended to make it easy for any one to build and manage a wiki-based web site.

2. URL of product

http://www.wikispaces.com/

3. History of the product

Wikispaces has been around since early 2005 (according to Tangient LLC, the company which runs Wikispaces).

Growth

From the Wikispaces Blog:

Back on March 18, 2005, we had a whopping six new members on Wikispaces, all unsuspecting friends who we enticed to join the site with promises of wiki awesomeness. We ended our first day with 87 edits, 18 wikis…

Fast-forward four years: as of March 15 2009, we had over 2.2 million registered members on Wikispaces and over 900,000 wikis. Our members and guests edit their wikis over 100,000 times a day, with as many as 9000 edits in an hour. In the last 30 days, over 7.3 million people visited Wikispaces.com and our Private Label sites. Last month, Wikispaces served over 50 million pages and in our last year, over 380 million pages.

As of late April 2009, Wikispaces is now available in eight different languages!

4. Creators and Maintainers

From the wikispaces "About page":

Wikispaces is run by Tangient which is Dominick Bellizzi, Jessica Brown, James Byers, Sarah Cove, Adam Frey, Debbie Guskin, Jeff Hanke, and Bisma Moon.

5. System Requirements for using the product

There do not seem to be any stated system requirements for using Wikispaces. A personal computer, internet browser, and internet connection are the obvious system requirements. The site does not give a listing of supported browsers.

6. Costs involved (trial, purchase cost)

According to the Wikispaces pricing page, there are five levels of service:

Basic

Basic is free, and provides a small and simple wiki, with ads.

Plus

Plus is $5/month or $50/year, and is similar to Basic, but with better security and privacy options, and without ads. You can also use Custom Themes.

Super

Super is $20/month or $200/year, and offers more storage than the Plus plan, domain name, and what they call WinDav support, which allows the user to treat their wiki like its a folder on their local computer.

Private Label

Private Label is a service designed for organizations. The cost is $100/month or $1000 per year. This service provides much more storage, a independent wiki environment (not shared with other wikis), and site-wide administration across all individual wikis.

Private Label Premium

Private Label Premium provides five times (200 GB) the storage of Private Label, phone support in addition to e-mail support, and additional tools to integrate the Wiki into your organization.

7. Main Value of the product

According to a review on AppAppeal.com, WikiSpaces is a "very basic, easy to understand collaboration tool" that features a "lack of intrusive advertising."

7a. Advantages

• WYSIWYG editing.
• No limits on numbers of pages, spaces, or members.
• Full RSS support.
• Ability to import or integrate with Blogger.com and Typepad.
• Page Histories that allow you to monitor activity on your Wiki. Each version of a page is saved, so you see who has made the change and compare those changes with the previous version.
• Discussion Forums are provided for each Wiki page, and are optional (you can turn them off).
• Easy to use:
  • Page editor features a tool bar that replicates simple word proccessing programs.
  • Users can quickly and easily embed Web 2.0 applications that might otherwise be difficult to utilize.

• Exceptional customer support
• Further Advantages, like SSL Encryption, Custom Permissions, and Custom Domain Names, are available for paying customers.

7b. Disadvantages

According to a review on wikimatrix (http://www.wikimatrix.org) Wikispaces:

• Does not offer a blacklist feature (a feature that creates a list of urls recognized to be spam which cannot be added to wiki pages.)
• Does not support Host Blocking (This is a basic anti-vandalism measure, which allows you to block repeat offenders from accessing your wiki.)
• According to the Wikispaces pricing page, free pages through the Basic Membership are not Ad-Free and must be Public. It should be noted that the ads are text-based Google Ads, not viral videos or flashing banners (this can be an advantage versus some other Wiki Apps).

8. Main Features

• Wikispaces offers an easy to use visual page editor.

Like a word processing program, a toolbar at the top of the editing window allows editors to format text, insert images or files, add widgets, and insert hyperlinks.

• Adding media elements such as a podcast, streaming video or RSS feed is done easily by using the "Embed Media" tool.
• An unlimited number of people may be invited to join your wiki.
• You can create an unlimited number of pages and discussion posts.

9. Library oriented tools

Wikis provide libraries with quick access to tools which are useful to both library staff members and patrons.

Collaboration

The collaborative work style of library staff make wikis a natural choice. Because wikis are designed to facilitate group editing, they are particularly useful for targeted projects that require collaboration across different library departments. Examples of projects that might use a wiki include writing a library grant proposal, developing a strategic plan or putting together an acquisition request. Wikispaces saves each version of each page so contributors can see who has made which changes and compare the differences between any two versions of the page.

Tracking and Statistics

Wikispaces also allows libraries to track how many visitors are coming to their site, where they are coming from, and how often edits and messages occur. These statistics provide valuable user-generated feedback to library staff. Statistics can be downloaded and repurposed in any number of administrative applications.

Access to Resources

Wikis can be used to provide access to almost any type of online resource, basically any content that can be added to a website can be added to a wiki without the need for library staff to learn html or web authoring software. Wikispaces in particular makes it easy for libraries to quickly inclorporate web 2.0 tools into their site. By using the "Embed Media" tool, features such as video clips, audio, calendars, and group chat can be quickly added to a wiki.

Uses in Different Types of Libraries

Here is an example of a School Library that has individual class pages. This class posted three videos: two of a puppet show they created and one on its creation. As in this example, the Wikispace could be used to publish students' work, providing an intrinsic reward and motivating factor. Students could even publish the content themselves with supervised access.

Wikispaces could be used in a Public Library with individual community pages, or "spaces," for different events occurring at the library. It could also be used for different collections.

Concerning Academic Libraries, Columbia University uses Wikispaces to create a site for every class (unfortunately, they are private, or an example would be provided). Creating a library page on each class's site could lead to more teacher-librarian collaboration and introduce students to the usefulness of the library for their topic of study.

Examples

Three examples of libraries using wikispaces:
http://rundlett-middle-school-library.wikispaces.com/
http://healeylibrary.wikispaces.com/
http://monarchlibrary.wikispaces.com/

10. Similar tools

See our Similar Tools page.

Comments