The wild, wacky, and wonderful world of wikis...

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The wild, wacky, and wonderful world of wikis...

• Presented by Jennifer J. Breazeale
• ASQ Denver Section 1300
• Membership Meeting
• January 25, 2006

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What is a wiki???

• A wiki is a kind of free-form website that is
  easy to edit.
• Edits are done in plain text and don't require
  learning fancy or complex codes like HTML. Just
  start typing!
• It's also easy to create new pages and make links
  to pages you've already made.

Source http//pbwiki.com/FAQ
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Trivia Question

• How did wikis get their name?
• Answer The WikiWikiWeb is named after the "Wiki
  Wiki" line of Chance RT-52 buses in Honolulu
  International Airport. The name is based on the
  Hawaiian term wiki, meaning "quick", "fast", or
  "to hasten" (Hawaiian dictionary).

Source http//en.wikipedia.org/Wikis
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What are some common uses for a wiki?

• Wikis can be useful tools for projects large and
  small. For example, you could use a wiki to
• Create and manage your to-do list
• Build and maintain a website and/or blog
• Share notes and brainstorm with your team on a
  project
• Track and report software bugs and fixes
• Build and manage your companys intranet or
  knowledgebase.

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Lets try an example

• For this example, well be editing a Wikipedia
  page.
• About Wikipedia
• Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is the free
  encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
• In the English version, started in 2001, we are
  currently working on 914,614 articles.
• There are also over 700,000 Wikipedians,
  registered users who actively maintain Wikipedia
  content.

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Example - Wikipedia
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Three wikis to check out...

• TiddlyWiki www.tiddlywiki.com
• A wiki self-contained within an HTML file. Built
  by Jeremy Ruston.
• PBWiki, www.pbwiki.com
• PBWiki enables user to create an unlimited amount
  of free wikis and also provides free hosting
  space (up to 10MB per wiki).
• MediaWiki, www.mediawiki.org
• MediaWiki is a free server-based software, that
  designed to be run on a large server farm for a
  website that gets millions of hits per day. (FYI,
  Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki.)

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Questions?
9
Appendix

• The following slides contain more information
  about wikis, including common questions and
  concerns. All information in these pages came
  from Wikipedia.

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Links and Creating Pages

• Wikis are a true hypertext medium, with
  non-linear navigational structures. Each page
  typically contains a large number of links to
  other pages.
• Hierarchical navigation pages often exist in
  larger wikis, often a consequence of the original
  page creation process, but they do not have to be
  used.
• Links are created using a specific syntax, the
  so-called "link pattern".

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Links and Creating Pages (cont.)

• New pages in a wiki are usually created simply by
  creating the appropriate links on a topically
  related page.
• If the link does not exist, it is typically
  emphasized as a "broken link". Following that
  link opens an edit window, which then allows the
  user to enter the text for the new page.
• This mechanism ensures that so-called "orphan"
  pages (which have no links pointing to them) are
  rarely created, and a generally high level of
  connectedness is retained.

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Searching

• Most wikis offer at least a title search, and
  sometimes a full text search. The scalability of
  the search depends on whether the wiki engine
  uses a database or not indexed database access
  is necessary for high speed searches on large
  wikis.
• On Wikipedia, the so-called "Go button" allows
  readers to directly view a page that matches the
  entered search criteria as closely as possible.

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Controlling Changes

• Wikis generally are designed with the philosophy
  of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather
  than making it difficult to make them. Thus while
  wikis are very open, they provide a means to
  verify the validity of recent additions to the
  body of pages.
• The most prominent, on almost every wiki, is the
  "Recent Changes" pagea specific list numbering
  recent edits, or a list of all the edits made
  within a given timeframe.
• Some wikis can filter the list to remove minor
  edits and edits made by automatic importing
  scripts ("bots")

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Controlling changes (cont.)

• A defining characteristic of wiki technology is
  the ease with which pages can be created and
  updated. Generally, there is no review before
  modifications are accepted. Most wikis are open
  to the general public without the need to
  register any user account. Sometimes session
  log-in is requested to acquire a "wiki-signature"
  cookie for autosigning edits. More private wiki
  servers require user authentication. However,
  many edits can be made in real-time, and appear
  almost instantaneously online.

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Controlling changes (cont.)

• From the change log, other functions are
  accessible in most wikis the Revision History
  showing previous page versions and the diff
  feature, highlighting the changes between two
  revisions.
• Using the Revision History, an editor can view
  and restore a previous version of the article.
• The diff feature can be used to decide whether or
  not this is necessary.
• A regular wiki user can view the diff of an edit
  listed on the "Recent Changes" page and, if it is
  an unacceptable edit, consult the history,
  restoring a previous revision this process is
  more or less streamlined, depending on the wiki
  software used.

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Controlling changes (cont.)

• In case unacceptable edits are missed on the
  "Recent Changes" page, some wiki engines provide
  additional content control.
• It can be monitored to ensure that a page, or a
  set of pages, keeps its quality.
• A person willing to maintain pages will be warned
  of modifications to the pages, allowing him or
  her to quickly verify the validity of new
  editions.