Lets Make A Wiki

1
Lets Make A Wiki

• A Website you can use right now for your group
  projects

2
What is a Wiki

• Invented by Ward Cunningham (1994)
• WikiWikiWeb (implemented in Perl)
• Derived from the Hawaiian word Waka Waka
• Means fast
• A Web page that a group of people can contribute
  content to quickly and easily
• Content is more important than presentation
• Easy to add content
• Quick to update

3
Sample Wikis

• Examples
• http//www.wikipedia.org
• 16,000 contributors
• 10 GB worth of text
• General information / fact based knowledge
• http//wiki.dal-acm.ca
• Chapter members contribute
• Update Meeting Agendas
• Signup sheets
• Plan projects
• D?ilets, A., Paquet, S., and Vinson, N. G. 2005.
  Are wikis usable?. In Proceedings of the 2005
  international Symposium on Wikis. WikiSym '05.
  3-15.
• http//portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id1104973.1104
  974collportaldlACMtypeseriesidx1104973par
  tProceedingsWantTypeProceedingstitleInternati
  onal20Symposium20On20WikisCFID4017103CFTOKEN
  77374709

4
Lets Review

• What is a Wiki?
• How is it different from Wordpress?
• Why is it important?
• Who invented them?

5
Enough Talk, Lets Hack

• Install MediaWiki
• Easy to install and use Wiki
• Requires about 7.5 MB
• Your account quotas have been increased
• Log into torch.cs.dal.ca
• quota -v
• du -k

6
Install instructions

• cd public_html
• wget http//internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforg
  e/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.5.8.tar.gz
• gunzip mediawiki-1.5.8.tar.gz
• tar xvf mediawiki-1.5.8.tar
• mv mediawiki-1.5.8 mediawiki
• chmod R 755 mediawiki

7
More Instructions

• cd mediawiki
• chmod 777 config
• Open a browser to http//torch.cs.dal.ca/username
  /mediawiki/
• Fill out the installation form
• chmod 755 config
• mv config/LocalSettings.php .
• Start using your wiki at http//torch.cs.dal.ca/
  cjordan/mediawiki/index.php

8
Play with your Wiki

• Try editing a page
• Make an external link
• Make an internal link to a page that does not
  exist
• Add an image

9
Future Work

• Play with the configuration settings
• Straight forward
• Only one file to edit

10
Questions for Me?
11
Questions for You

• What problem do Wikis try to solve?
• Are Wikis a complete solution?
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• How can you use Wikis for group work?
• Can you use them for your group projects in other
  courses?