After I retired and my wife and I followed our children, and especially our grandchildren, across the country to another ocean, we kept encountering new issues that we had to face and decisions we had to make. Looking for some guidance, on the Internet and at the library, I was unable to find any cohesive guide. What I did find was rarely pragmatic and never authored by those with any experience in the matter, i.e. the senior citizens themselves.
In response to that lack, I built wikisenior.com as a technical infrastructure on which other seniors could add their thoughts. Unlike a blog, a wiki is an Internet format specifically built for the collaboration of many people. Wikipedia.org was not the first wiki site, but it is the most famous. However, there are many wiki sites throughout the Internet, and their support of collaboration make them popular at research facilities and universities. Each wiki requires a core technician to maintain the structure, but all the collaborating authors are considered to be equal.
Acting as the core technician has become my ‘volunteer day job’. I wrote a rough framework for a number of articles to get the process started, with the idea that people would be more comfortable adding to an article that had been started rather than facing a blank screen.
Next, I started this blog with the idea that it could be used to promote the wiki. To promote an Internet site, you must make the site known to the search engines, e.g. Google and Yahoo. Since the search engines use different algorithms for blogs, it makes sense to complement any site with a blog.
Initially, I took the easy path toward blogging by using a blog service, e.g. Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad. They are slick and efficient, but they are not tightly coupled to the wiki site. This site, using the WordPress software, is tightly bound to the wiki, acting as an independent facet of the wiki site itself.
Unlike a wiki, blogs are authored by one central author, with appended comments from readers offering the only expansion of the author’s views. Some blogs are really a treasure, but I know I have not achieved that level here. Fundamentally, I’m trying to ask the questions. I’m looking for the wisdom of my fellow seniors for the answers. I hope to find those answers at wikisenior.com.
Hope you like this new format. Please let me know if you find any ‘oops’ issues.
Tags: senior lifestyles, senior living guide