In case you’re missing it, there’s some very interesting discussion going on between some Civil War bloggers who are looking at the medium and its role in digital history in general and “information compilation” in particular. The conversation has become a little unwieldy. As a recap, you can find it spread over the following posts (listed oldest to newest on each blog):
Battlefield Wanderings
Bull Runnings:
Cenantua’s Blog
Crossed Sabers
Draw the Sword and Throw Away the Scabbard
To the Sound of the Guns
And now, Brian Downey of Antietam on the Web and Behind Antietam on the Web has helped us all out by setting up a Wiki for the whole shebang:
Hey Brian: maybe one of the first things we should do is move all the comments from the above posts, and perhaps the posts themselves, to the Wiki?
This has been one of the most rewarding exchanges I’ve had with fellow bloggers. It’s forced me to rethink some things (though I have to admit I’m irked that you guys who convinced me to use tags are now convincing me that I don’t need them!). I think good things will come of it.
Harry Smeltzer
Bull Runnings 
Hi Harry,
I’m happy to move those things to the Wiki. First we’ll need the original authors to agree to the re-use – maybe they (y’all) can talk about that on the wiki.
Also, the power of a wiki is that everybody builds/edits. Sharing authoring and structuring. A wiki’s not a blog.
Power to the people, man.
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Brian,
Excuse my ignorance – I have no idea how to leave a comment on a Wiki. i tried it once a long time ago but think I did it wrong.
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I’ll try to put together a better page about how to use the wiki.
It’s not so much commenting as building/writing you want to be doing. Ours is just like wikipedia: click on the edit tab at the top of a page and add or revise to your haeart’s content. To create a new page, do a search (box in the left column) for the name of the new page you want to add. It won’t exist, of course, so the wiki will prompt you to create/edit it.
Use the formatting cues you’ll see in the existing pages for hints about how to create sections, add images, etc. There’s a complete manual of how-to here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User's_Guide
A wiki needs a different kind of mindset form a blog. It’s really a webpage that anyone can edit/build and write for at any time. It’s not so much for reading as for creating. Like wikipedia, I hope many hands will form a body of information that no one person could readily do alone.
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Great job Brian! I tried to leave a comment at your blog, but it just wouldn’t let me. So, I figured I would let you know here. As a test, I put in an extract from one of my blog postings. It will be interesting working with this as, like you said, it is different from blogging. Robert
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Doh! Sorry Harry, Brian, Craig, et al, You might not recognize “southernunionists” as my regular handle. Just so happened that when I made this comment, I was logged into my Southern Unionists Chronicles Blog, which I maintain separate from all of the projects under my “Cenantua’s Blog.” Just need to let you know, it’s still me! Robert
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[…] Comments Wiki! « Bull R… on Where did the zeal go for the …Sherree on And speaking of “la…cenantua […]
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I’m also ignorant on using wiki but I’m fine with my stuff being moved there. And I’ll figure out how to use it in the future
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[…] compilation blog” or “battle blog.” You can read about that here and here. Share this:TwitterFacebookStumbleUponRedditDiggLinkedInPrintEmailLike this:LikeBe the first to […]
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