Wikis in all of Their Glory

For me, as for many other college and university students, the word "wiki" is connected with suspicion and guilt. This is, of course because wikis are all about free speech and allowing anyone to have their say, to add their 2 cents to the discussion of this or that topic. Of course we can see why institutions such as colleges and universities, who's primary perogative is the control and regultion of knowlege, would be opposed to this. For the rest of us, however, Wikis are a great leveling factor. In my brief little stint looking at a few of them I have learned a few things about their uses (other than the ubiquitous wikipedia) and even been coaxed out of my internet-proof den long enough to contribute to a wiki based school project I had been boycotting (not so much for anti-wiki reasons as anti-internet-instead-of-teacher reasons) adn learned why the instructor who assigned said project is one of maybe 3 faculty members singin the praises of Wikis. One thing that I found especially informative was the common craft show's take on Wikis in plain english. Always good info from that show, they seem to understand that rather than explaining how something works, it is more sensible to explain why you would use it.