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Attraction by Interaction: Wiki Webs As A Way To Increase The Attractiveness Of Museums' Web SitesPeter Hoffmann and Michael Herczeg, Institute for Multimedia and Interactive Systems, University of Luebeck, GermanyAbstractClassical Internet Web sites are passive: visitors can only read the information presented. There are several possibilities to integrate interaction in Web sites with the goal of making visitors feel more comfortable and letting them spend a longer time on the Web site. Typical possibilities like trivia quizzes, interactive simulation applets and more lack any creative potential. Some forms of modern communication technology offer a wider range of interaction, but remain relatively unknown and thus unused. Such interaction is often more social. One example is Wiki Webs, which are tools for collaborative work: the user is part of a community and can add content to a Web site or edit existing content. For museums, both virtual and real, Wiki Web technology can be interesting because visitors are able to change the information content of the exhibition in several ways, and thus leave their own individual traces in the exhibition. The Wikiseum of Bad Movies, which is introduced in this paper, is a virtual exhibition which uses the interactive potential of Wiki Webs. It supports both a static exhibition, where the visitor is really just visitor, and an interactive exhibition, where the visitor can be active and interactively create the exhibition. Keywords: interactive Web, social interaction, Wiki Web, communities, collaboration 1 IntroductionThe Internet is a passive medium. Internet users can only read the information presented. Much research has shown, for example, that the Internet user generally does not take the time to read longer texts. If a way is found to give the visitor some possibilities of interaction, the time spent on the Web site is easily extended (Nielson, 2000). There are several possibilities for interaction. Those which are typically used give the visitors a chance to change parameters, e.g. to clarify the laws of physics like the "interactive journey through modern physics", created at the University of Colorado, Boulder (http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/index.pl) or the Web site of the "Phanomenta"-Exhibition in Luedenscheid, Germany (http://www.phaenomenta.com). Another often used possibility, not only for younger users, is trivia quizzes like the "Egg trivia Q's and A's" of the Provincial Museum of Alberta (http://www.pma.edmonton.ab.ca/vexhibit/eggs/vexhome/ques1.htm) or the quizzes at the Web site of the Moneymuseum in Hadlaub, Switzerland (http://mm3.moneymuseum.com/quiz/index.jsp?lang=en). These possibilities look good but lack any real creative potential. If the interaction on the site is merely answering questions in a quiz or operating sliders, this activity is not creative. Some possibilities for users to interact in a creative fashion were presented at the workshop Fresh and Interesting Features for any Budget at Museums and the Web 2004 (Drake 2004). Another way to allow interaction by visitors to a Web site is to let them feel part of a community. In that community they can show their knowledge on a topic, let others know about it, and even discuss things presented by specialists. This way of interaction motivates visitors in a very special way: it minimizes the barrier between the specialists (here: the experts at museums) and the interested visitor. 1.1 Wiki WebsWiki Webs are interactive tools used as applications at the front end of the Internet. As Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham say (Leuf, Cunningham, 2001), Wiki Webs are "a freely expandable collection of interlinked Web pages, a hypertext system for storing and modifying information - a database, where each page is easily editable by any user with a forms-capable web browser client." Ward Cunningham was the inventor of the Wiki Web idea and the developer of the first usable Wiki Web software. With his software he started in the year 1995 the primary Wiki Web which is named "WikiWikiWeb". In Cunningham's own words (Cunningham 1995), the software was created "for the Portland Pattern Repository. It is home to an Informal History Of Programming Ideas, as well as a large volume of related discourse and collaboration between its readers." It is still active up to this day as a community for software developers and is used by interested developers as a discussion platform throughout software engineering, programming and all kinds of related subjects. Originally Cunningham developed the software in Perl. Since then,, Wiki Web engines have become available in nearly every common programming language and script language. The most popular project based on the Wiki Web idea is Wikipedia with all corresponding sub projects like Wikibooks, Wiktionary or the latest one, Wikinews, which is planned to be a free and open news reader. The Wikipedia is a free-content encyclopedia which is editable by anyone. The English version was started in 2001 and comprises currently more than 450,000 articles (http://www.wikipedia.org); besides the English version, there are versions in more than 100 languages, with more than one million articles by September 2004. The project's ambitious goal is to create a free and reputable encyclopedia. The project is managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization which is also responsible for the sub projects mentioned above. The people who work on the platform and its content call themselves, proudly, Wikipedians. It is a huge community of thousands of people, and it is still growing. There are two possible ways to be a part of this community: anonymous access or access with a registered account (http://www.wikipedia.org). Generally, anyone who is able to edit a Web page, perhaps assisted by the Wikipedia project's internal help pages, and has encyclopedic knowledge to share, can work on the content. So it is not necessary to register. What makes it expedient to register is its reputation, especially for the quality work in the Wikipedia project. The users of the Wikipedia trust entries from registered writers more than entries from the unregistered because it is possible to see other entries edited by that registered Wikipedian. This can lead to a positive and confident use of the entry. Furthermore, it is more convenient to collaborate with known people than with anonymous users. Without registration it is harder to contact the person who has written an entry, to discuss it. Anyone can create a user name and become a member in the Wikipedia project. Even registered, the user remains anonymous because it is not necessary to enter the real name or an email address. The Wikipedia and all of the surrounding sub-projects run GPL-ed free software with the name MediaWiki. It is written in PHP, especially adjusted for the project and its goals. 1.2 Weblogs vs. WikisFor the public, Internet Wiki Webs stand a little bit in the shadow of a different but related technique, the weblog or blog. The differences between weblogs and Wiki Webs centre around three basic points. A weblog is mainly administered by only one person, called a blogger. This person is the only one who creates, edits, and changes items on the weblog page. In the weblog page the blogger presents a selective list of commented Web links. These comments on the links can vary from just a single rating word to a whole comprehensive article. Sometimes visitors have the chance to comment on the links and the bloggers' comments. In general the weblog is a subjective view on the Internet, because there is only one topic in the blog: the blogger himself, what he is looking at and thinking about. In comparison with weblogs, Wiki Webs are, as a general rule, started around a topic. The content of the Wiki Web is edited not just by one single person but by a distributed group of editors and authors. Any visitor can be a user, editor or author; anyone can introduce his own knowledge to the Wiki Web. If there is at least a minimum number of active users in the special Wiki Web community, the outcome is an objective view of the topic. In Wiki Webs, users have not just the possibility of commenting on links and comments. They have also the opportunity to change whole text passages, to add texts to the existing one, and even to delete text passages. For all that, they do not have to have any knowledge of HTML programming. 1.3 Wiki Web Technology and Wiki Web FunctionalityThe technology used for Wiki Webs is a well known technology which runs behind most dynamic Internet applications. It is based on basic HTML elements and functionalities like forms, automatic word wrapping and textual rendering. The HTML-Pages are generated by applications running on the servers. The Wiki Web environment is an open authoring system which can be used all over the world wherever there is Internet access. The Wiki Web engine can be implemented in any programming language able to handle dynamic content (i.e. a connection to a database or internal data handling). Typically Wiki Webs have a number of common features:
These features are often adapted and supplemented to reach a special goal of the single Wiki Web, as MediaWiki does for the Wikipedia. Some additional features are, for example:
The demands for adaptation and extension of the technical possibilities and functionalities of a Wiki Web come from the requirements of the community which uses this special Wiki Web. As the topics Wiki Webs are used for can vary widely, the user groups are very different too, so the requirements of how to work with the Wiki Web can vary very much. 1.3.1 Actual Possibilities of Interaction in WikisThe predominant content of most Wiki Webs is text. However, in many Wiki Webs it is possible to inserts images and files as attachments to single Wiki Web pages. So the set of offered interaction possibilities is of course a mixture of known interaction in word processing environments and web applications:
The workflow does not accord to WYSIWYG interaction. Even if the HTML form text area itself supports WYSIWYG based text editing interaction, (probably only in a simplified way), the operational procedure is not really WYSIWYG (Herczeg 1994). Not before the Submit button is used can the author see the modifications he has made. Not before that moment can the author spot possible errors like typos, incorrect formatting and the like in the final context of the single Wiki Web page. To correct the entry in the Wiki Web page, the author then has to repeat the procedure mentioned above until the modification accords to his notions. Targeted search for information within a Wiki Web is navigation in the Wiki Web content. The interaction Wiki Webs maintain, therefore, follows the normal interaction principles of browsing the Internet by using links. The navigation and the support to prevent users from getting lost in the Wiki Web content is in most Wiki Webs realized in at least two ways.
1.3.2 The Data-Storage in Wiki WebsEvery Wiki Web page, even every version of a Wiki Web page and every image and file attached to a Wiki Web page, has to be stored somewhere. Only two ways are usable:
Importing files into a Wiki Web which uses a database is easier than importing into those Wiki Webs which do not. Importing data from one Wiki Web to another Wiki Web can easily be done by the backup of the database or by merging both databases. Therefore it is only necessary that there be an adequate porting function or porting filter in at least one of the two Wiki Web engines. Then not even the Wiki Web engines themselves have to be the same. Data which derives from a pure database and which will be imported into a Wiki Web is to be processed and prepared in an appropriate way. This could be automatically done with the help of specially developed software. If the data is stored within the file system of the Wiki Web, the importing is more complicated. All files have to be converted to text files; images have to be copied into the corresponding folder and then have to be linked manually. For a big database, this means an immense effort. 2 The Wikiseum – Wiki Web Technology for (Virtual) MuseumsNearly every institution like a museum has a more or less large Web presence. This is used for publishing the profile of the institution: it gives an overview of the institution's research domains and an introduction to available collections. Many of the Web presences choose to combine both points by creating a virtual exhibit as a part of the Web presence, where digitized exhibits are shown and explained. The offered interactivity on those virtual exhibitions is the same as in all usual Web pages too:
Even if it is well known and accepted that interactivity can enhance a Web presence in a way which motivates visitors to stay longer on the Web, it seems to be difficult to find appropriate forms for the use of interactivity in serious Web sites. Interactivity related to Web presences is in most cases separated from the presentation of the content and considered as a gimmick or just a gadget. Very often the idea of interactivity is reduced to games, even oftener for younger visitors. Only in some circumstances are games really related to the topic of the virtual collection; this is mainly when technical or scientific aspects are the collection domain and the games explain, for example, the laws of gravity or the like (Fiesser 2001). Beside the possibilities games of all kind offer, there is another alternative to give the visitors the chance of getting involved and motivating them to explore the Web site: it is to give them the chance to get creative and to show personal knowledge, and so to let them become part of an "expert" community where they can discuss things and where they even can show creativity. This is what technologies like the Wiki Web technology provide.. The combination of the usual Web presence and classical virtual exhibits with highly interactive Wiki Web-based parts could be called a Wikiseum. A Wiki Web context could give visitors to an institution's or a museum's Web site the feeling that they are not just simple visitors. In fact, they can become part of the museum's community and so get closer to the experts and researchers. They can share and discuss their knowledge, with the possibility of publishing this knowledge in the museum's Wiki Web, and furthermore, with the possibility of attaching files, probably media files, and designing parts of the Wiki Web page, as far as the Wiki Web allows that. All those possible activities may boost the visitors' motivation to stay longer and dig more deeply into the Web site. They may be more curious and look more closely at the exhibits and the whole exhibition. Finally, this may lead to more curiosity about the real exhibits and a higher readiness to visit the museum in reality. 2.1 Users' RolesThe Web presence of an institution or a museum is an administered project. The content of the Web site has to be accurately selected, processed and designed and must not be changed by simple visitors. This stands in contradiction to the idea of the Wiki Web where everyone can change everything. In the Wikiseum this conflict is resolved by providing different kinds of users with different levels of permitted interaction possibilities: not every user may do everything. In addition, the Wikiseum supports these user roles during both aspects, the editing and the visiting. During the editing, only the kind of interaction and design possibilities are provided which accord to the specific user role. If a page of the Wikiseum is visited, it reveals which class of user edited the page and made the single entries. So it is easily possible to identify if an article derives from an administrator or a visitor, and this makes the differences transparent. 2.1.1 The AdministratorThe administrator is allowed to do everything. He is the one who plans and arranges the virtual exhibition and designs it as well. This includes decisions about what virtual exhibits are shown, how the virtual exhibits are arranged and commented on, and to which other virtual exhibits or parts of the Wikiseum they are linked. So the administrator offers a fixed and at that level not changeable exhibition as a start for the Wikiseum community. The contents and the comments have at least a minimum level of expert knowledge with a maximum reputation, because the administrator of course is an expert in that context. The linking, done by the administrator, has amongst other things, the task of marking a main guided path through the virtual exhibition: it leads to the most important articles. So it is an aid for navigating through the content of the Wikiseum. Without these links a visitor might get lost. Everything an administrator does, regarding design as well as uploads, endures until another user of the administrator class edits or deletes the article. Besides the influence on the content, the administrator is permitted to manage as many kinds of users as there are visitors, moderators and further administrators. The role of the administrator includes the functionality of all other user roles. 2.1.2 The ModeratorThe moderator is allowed to do nearly everything. He has no influence on the content and the design of the virtual exhibit, but he has to supervise it. His work can be seen as a kind of quality management. This includes also questions about the legality of the articles and the uploaded attachments. The moderator takes a look at edited and new articles and releases them if they meet the demands of the Wikiseum in substance as well as in style. Furthermore, he has the power to mark the articles, and edits regarding durability with a flag, controlling whether they shall be archived or not. This influences how long an entry is seen on the Wikiseum page and whether the entry will be stored in a user archive when the exhibit has reached its maximum durability. To rate and handle the entries of the users and visitors in an adequate way, the moderator has to have expert knowledge in the field of the virtual exhibit. Furthermore, the moderator manages visitor registrations. The role of the moderator includes the functionality of all other user roles of the lower levels. 2.1.3 The VisitorsAdministrators and moderators are user roles with official functions and the power of actions with large-scale influence. Visitors can be any users surfing the net and stopping at the Wikiseum. This group is a heterogeneous one; it is impossible to say what kind of visitor is about to visit the Wikiseum. But visitors can be divided into two classes. The goal is to be able to differentiate between the casual and transient public and the more interested who are visiting the Wikiseum more frequently and maybe with greater previous knowledge. This division can be seen as another kind of basic quality management of the entries done by the visitors. The entries of both visitor groups differ from each other and furthermore from those of the administrators and the moderators. So it is easily recognizable from which class of user an entry derives. 2.1.3.1 Registered VisitorsThe registered visitor is allowed to do many things, and what he does may endure for a long time. Possibly an entry may be assumed into the permanent virtual exhibition; if this happens, it will be marked in a way that it is still identifiable as a visitor entry. Registered visitors are frequent guests on the Wikiseum and visit it regularly. They are very interested in the domain of the Wikiseum and have adequate knowledge or want to improve it. They are more or less able to discuss things in the context on a higher level with the experts, as the moderators or administrators are.. For that reason they choose to register by name, nickname, an email address and a password. This gives them the opportunity to be seen and to feel part of the community, as each entry is signed. With small differences, the interaction possibilities of the registered visitors are the same as those of the unregistered visitors. By discarding anonymity, the registered visitors acquire permission to insert links which may lead to URLs outside of the Wikiseum and to insert attachments like media files to their entries. These are both sensitive interaction possibilities with perhaps legal effects; e.g. on copyrights, citations, critical content on other Web sites and so on. This should only be possible for visitors who are known by name and at least email address. A less sensitive possibility offered to the registered visitors is to create and publish their own guided tours beside the tours offered by the administrator. With that opportunity the registered visitors show other visitors a set of exhibits in a special sequence, and other visitors may follow these tours and see these special collections. 2.1.3.2 Unregistered VisitorsUnregistered visitors are allowed to do few things, and everything expires after a short time. They can be seen as casual visitors or visitors with less concern about the domain of the Wikiseum; otherwise they would register. With less interest, it is assumed that their knowledge is not very detailed. So the relevance of their entries is not as high as that of the registered visitor. Analogous to the registered visitor, there is the chance that a moderator rates the unregistered visitor's entry as good and expands the durability or even accommodates it in the permanent virtual exhibition. Because of legal aspects, the unregistered visitor is not allowed to insert external links and attachments like media files to his entries. The unregistered visitor stays anonymous; his entries are not signed with his name. He is only a guest and not really a part of the community. 2.2 Interaction in the WikiseumThe interaction possibilities can roughly be divided into two classes: interaction for managing the Wikiseum, which also includes the generation of whole new exhibitions, and interaction for handling, generating and designing the content of the Wikiseum. The first is aimed to the operators and does not have any effect for the visitors. The visitors' interaction possibilities are all party to the second group mentioned above and mainly known from other Wiki Webs.
Not every Wiki Web engine offers all kinds of interaction possibilities as shown in section 1.3. For the realization of the Wikiseum, a Wiki Web engine was chosen which is in the offered functionality as close as possible to the desires of the Wikiseum. Furthermore, the source code is free and open to expansion and to adapt the Wiki Web engine. The chosen engine is the JSPWiki (http://www.jspwiki.org), a Wiki Web engine written in Java using Java Server Pages, so it is easy to adapt existing functions and to expand with some new ones. The main technical work was done on the following points.
2.3 Expected Advantages of the WikiseumAnother new feature is to be integrated into the Wikiseum engine. It is a tool for logging the visitors' actions and paths for an evaluation, seeing how the visitors behave and how long they visit the Wikiseum and the single Wikiseum pages. For the evaluation of the visits, a short Web-based questionnaire is be drafted and installed. It is expected that visitors browse a longer time through the Wikiseum using its functions. The offered possibility to become creative ought to lead to increased motivation to explore the virtual exhibit more precisely. The chance to show individual knowledge should furthermore lead to many entries or even to discussions between visitors and maybe experts. Both changing something in a creative way and showing what you have learned is more fun and entertaining than simply consuming static Web pages. All points together of course should, last but not least, arouse curiosity for a visit to the real museum and exhibition. 3 The Wikiseum of Bad MoviesTo have a first Wikiseum for testing the developed Wiki Web engine and for the evaluation of the visitors' behaviour later on, a domain was needed where an exhibition could be created without very specialized knowledge as, for example, in the arts or the like; the virtual exhibition should be created without the explicit help of any museum. The advantage of this is that the virtual exhibition is easy to adapt, if necessary, because it is local, and no external administrator has to be incorporated. Fig. 1 The Wikiseum of Bad Movies The domain chosen is bad movies: the Wikiseum of Bad Movies. This topic has the advantage that personal interest and knowledge of the movies, and especially bad movies, could flow into the creation of the Wikiseum. Also, it is easy to find multimedia elements for that topic. But most important, movies and especially bad movies give nearly everyone the possibility to have something to say. So it should be easy to reach a sufficient number of visitors for later evaluation. The virtual exhibition of the Wikiseum of Bad Movies. The "Foyer" is the entry and exit page; from here every part can be reached - all guided tours start from here:
The visitor enters through the Foyer page. Here general information about the Wikiseum and the exhibition is offered, and all parts of the virtual exhibition are reachable. Also, all guided paths of the administrator start here The paths through all of the several parts:
If visitors leave the Foyer of the Wikiseum through the Foyer, feedback forms are offered to them, so that they are interviewed and can rate the Wikiseum and the virtual exhibit. This feedback form, together with the logged behaviour, is the basis for the later evaluation. Fig. 2: Different content can be inserted by visitors and administrators and can also be combined by inserted links to guided paths. 4 Future WorkWith the realization of the Wikiseum engine and the publishing of the Wikiseum of Bad Movies, the first part of the project is done, and the second part starts. This is the evaluation phase, during which the feedback of the visitors is analyzed to improve both the technique of the Wikiseum engine and the content and composition of the virtual exhibition. The duration of this phase depends on the number of visitors. With an improved Wikiseum engine and interpreted evaluation, another Wikiseum is planned, this time in one of Luebeck's "real" museums. Parallel to it, the Wikiseum of Bad Movies will still exist and be evaluated throughout a longer time in terms of user behaviour and acceptance. 5 ReferencesCunningham, Ward (1995). Wiki Org. consulted: Jan. 28, 2005. http://wiki.org/ Deutsches Software-Entwickler-Wiki (2004). Deutsches Software-Entwickler-Wiki DSE04 (German Software Developers Wiki DSE04). consulted: Jan. 28, 2005. http://www.wikiservice.at/dse/wiki.cgi?WikiTechnologie Drake, Ted (2004).Fresh and Interesting Features for any Budget. In D. Bearman & J. Trant (Eds). Museums And the Web 2004: Proceeding. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, 2004.last updated March 25, 2004, consulted Jan. 28, 2005. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/abstracts/prg_250000682.html Fiesser, Lutz (2001). Science-Zentren - Interaktive Erfahrungsfelder mit naturwissenschaftlich-technischer Grundlage. Schriftenreihe zum interaktiven Lernen. (Science Centres – Interactive Fields of Experiences with scientific and technical basics. Publishings for interactive learning). Velbert: Friedrich Verlag. Herczeg, Michael (2004). Software-Ergonomie. Grundlagen der Mensch-Computer-Kommunikation (Software-Ergonomics – Basics of Man-Computer-Communication). Munich: Oldenbourg. Jiron, Tony (2004): Hello everyone, and welcome to the home of JSPWiki! JSPWiki. Last edited 30-Dec-2004 06:19:37 EET. consulted: Jan. 28, 2005. http://www.jspwiki.org/ Kiupel, Michael & H. R. Dirk. Phänomenta: Natur und Technik erleben und begreifen (Phanomenta: Experiencing and Understanding Nature and Technic); Lüdenscheid, Germany. consulted: Jan. 28, 2005. http://www.phaenomenta.com Leuf, Bo; Ward Cunningham(2001). The Wiki Way. Quick Collaboration on the Web. Boston: Addison-Wesley. McGillivray, W. Bruce (1999). EGG TRIVIA Q's and A's. The Provincial Museum of Alberta. consulted: Jan. 28, 2005. http://www.pma.edmonton.ab.ca/vexhibit/eggs/vexhome/ques1.htm Nielsen, Jakob (2000). Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. Berkeley: New Riders Publishing. Indianapolis. Ruder, Michael (1999). Physics 2000, an interactive journey through modern physics. University of Colorado, Boulder. consulted: Jan. 28, 2005. http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/index.pl Schwyzer, Carol (2004). Quizzes at the Moneymuseum. Hadlaub, Switzerland: consulted: Jan. 28, 2005. http://mm3.moneymuseum.com/quiz/index.jsp Wikipedia (2001): The Wikipedia. consulted: Jan. 28, 2005. http://www.wikipedia.org Wikipedia (2005): The Wikipedia FAQ: Should I create an Account. consulted: Jan. 28, 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Overview_FAQ# Should_I_create_an_account.3F_Can.27t_I_just_edit_articles_anonymously.3F Cite as:Hoffmann, P., and M. Herczeg, Attraction by Interaction: Wiki Webs As A Way To Increase The Attractiveness Of Museums' Web Sites, in J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds.). Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings, Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, published March 31, 2005 at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2005/papers/hoffmann/hoffmann.html |
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