2. Usability
If we are making a decision about something like which Mediawiki-software based open educational resource to use, realizing our educational/information needs plays a central role, and we need to answer the following question: “What are we planning to use the given OER MWS for?”
Correctly created OER MWS have a defined target group and should be able to satisfy its information and educational needs. For example, there is a difference in using individual wiki systems. While Wikipedia’s target group is relatively open (it defines itself mainly as an encyclopedia) and the creation of its content is liberal in the sense that it is up to each article’s community to create their own content. In comparison to this, for example, the Czech medicine-oriented WikiSkripta focuses on students of medical studies, and its ambition is to educate students in these fields; it does not attempt to substitute classic study materials or textbooks, but to act as an addition to them. The Enviwiki encyclopedia of the environment is designated to those interested in knowledge from the area of the environment, both for students and the general public; its purpose is not to substitute Wikipedia, which it differs from in a number of ways.
Generally speaking, anonymous OER MWS are usually not recommended as a primary source for studying a given issue in an area like university education, where students should primarily be taught to use traditional and respected resources (see the previous chapter on Purposes of use). Even an anonymous resource can be suitably used, primarily as a guidepost to other sources, which can be cited for further research in the references at the end of the article or in a section like “literature for further study”. If we do not want to use the resource only for our educational needs but also use it to create another resource, it is first necessary to look at the licensing conditions, i.e. what license the resource we are using is under and whether this license allows for further use. It is ideal if the resource is licensed under some form of open license.