Week 4: Wikis

November 26, 2007

So far we have explored Blogging as a way of quickly and easily publishing content to the web and we have also explored RSS feeds as means of syndicating such content. While Blogs can be undertaken as collaborative enterprises, the 2.0 technology we will be looking at this week is particularly suited to online collaborative authoring — Wikis. This week we will take a look at what wikis are, how they are used, and what features are common to most.

Start here!
If you enjoyed last week’s video on RSS, you’ll love this week’s called “Wikis in Plain English”. The folks at Common Craft are at it again, explaining 2.0 tools in easy-to-get ways, and this short video about wikis is a great way to jump into this week’s content!

So, what’s a Wiki?
A wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, and otherwise collaboratively edit and change content that can be quickly published to the web. This ease of interaction and use makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. You do not need to know HTML to edit a wiki (although many allow for the use of HTML editing in addition to Wikitext or Wiki Markup) and all you need to edit a wiki is an internet connection and a web browser. Wikitext, a form of markup which is simpler than HTML, may also vary to a degree from one wiki to another, here’s a sample of Wikitext used in MediaWiki. There are numerous kinds of “wiki software” or “wiki engines”, these can vary widely in look and functionality. Features common to most wiki software include: Recent activity display, discussion or comment features, and varying degrees of access / edit permissions for users, WYSIWYG editing and edit history.

Wiki software can be downloaded and installed on a private network; you can even get your own personal desktop wiki! (Such as MoinMoin Desktop), but most wiki users go to a Wiki farm. A Wiki Farm is a server or a collection of servers that provides wiki hosting. Wiki farms allow users to quickly sign-up and establish their own wiki with no software downloads either for free or for a nominal change (free wikis are supported by revenue from advertising).

Examples of Wikis in Career Services & other campus services:

What’s the difference? Choosing the right wiki
TWiki, WetPaint, Stikipad, PHPWiki, SeedWiki, PBWiki, Wikispaces, MoinMoin, Netcipia… with all these different wikis to choose from you might have a difficult time deciding which wiki is most suited to your project. A tool you might find useful for comparing the features of various wikis is Wikimatrix. The Wikimatrix website has several useful features for comparing any number of more than 80 wiki engines listed. So what are some of the features common to Wikis & what are some differences?

  • Wikis allow you to assign different access permissions to different users. The site creator (Administrator) can assign other Administrators or Moderators to the Wiki. Wikis typically have several levels of contributors with varying degrees of access, such as Admin, Mod, Writer, Registered User, and Guest.
  • Many wikis allow users to subscribe to them either via email or RSS feeds. Some allow users to subscribe to specific pages and keep apprised of recent edits.
  • Personalization of user accounts can be quite different from wiki to wiki; some allow for the creation of detail user profiles, private messaging, and commenting upon individual profiles.
  • Many wikis are tiered with both free accounts and ‘premium memberships’ that often have added features such as a higher page limits or greater storage capacity.
  • Pages edit history & Revert. Wikis allow users to view the history of specific pages, and mark up recent changes. Many have more advanced edit comparison features that may allow users to compare the changes to an entry over the course of months! Wikis also typically have a revert feature that allows those with sufficient access permissions to rollback a page to an earlier edit.
  • WYSIWYG. Not only do most wikis allow users to use Wikitext instead of Html, but wikis also have “What You See Is What You Get” editors that make it even easier for anyone to contribute!

Activity #1
The first activity for this week is to try some basic editing in a wiki. I’ve set up a wiki called “my favourite books” (password to edit=Mills): try adding pages, links, comments, and look at the page history feature. Once you’ve had a chance to play around in the wiki, post your thoughts and comments to your blog. If you’ve already used PBWiki in the past, feel free to examine and compare the features of wikis you haven’t used before, you can always set up a free account with any of the wikis below or use Wikimatrix to find others to explore.

Need help getting started? Check out the link on the main page of “My favourite books” for the link “Here is a list of a few features you may want to test on PBWiki” for the basics of editing.

Further readings (optional)

Posted by amanda etches-johnson
Filed in week 4, wikis
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