Welcome to the Wiki Workshop

Who the three of us are

Workshop goals

You’ll learn what it’s all about

What wikis are

How they can be used

You’ll learn the basic functions of a wiki

Editing pages

Creating links between pages

Creating new pages

Formatting conventions

You’ll have some idea of what to do next

Set up a new wiki

Keep it going strong

You’ll begin to understand the very wikiness of wikis

Above all, you will not fear the wiki!

How the workshop will be structured

1.	Paul will talk for a bit about what wikis are, where they came from, and how they work

2.	Dave will get you started in the wiki he set up just for this workshop

3.	Paul will add a few words on building wiki communities, the future of wikis, and other such stuff

4.	Free play time

Did everybody get the handouts?

[Ideas: Syntax quick guide, URL for the workshop wiki, URLs for further information. —Paul.]

Terminology

Wiki vs. Wiki-wiki

Either form is OK, but wiki is more common

Origin of the word

Hawai‘ian wiki, wikiwiki ‘to hurry, hasten; quick, fast, speedy’ – better than the alternative ‘Quick Web’

Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the first wiki, thought of calling it a ‘Quick Web’ but that sounded boring, and he remembered the ‘Wiki Wiki’ shuttle buses at Honolulu airport and called it WikiWikiWeb instead.
WikiWiki_01_01

Pronunciation

WEE-kee is closest to the Hawai‘ian pronunciation, but lots of people say WICK-ee

Wiki syntax / Wiki text

The text markup rules for a particular wiki – e.g., *this* means <b>this</b>.

What is a wiki?

A web site that anyone can edit

You’ve all probably used Wikipedia

The best-known wiki, but not at all typical

A web site built by its users

– using ordinary web browsers

no special software required

– as they use it

making and using become one activity

– without having to know HTML

no special skills required

A community collaboration

A personal scratchpad

The simplest online database that could possibly work

— Ward Cunningham

And many other things

Where does it come from?

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiHistory

First wiki – 1995

How does it work?

The everyday routine

As you write, make links out of things that should (eventually) have a page in the wiki

Whether they actually do or not is not important at this point

Go back and see what links are dead ends, and put in stubs so they’re not dead ends any more

Links to non-existent pages look different, so it’s obvious what pages don’t exist.

Later, flesh out the dead ends

Repeat ad infinitum

Linking conventions:

WikiWords

Also known as CamelCase. People who build wikis that use this convention quickly get used to it, but it can look funny to people who aren’t used to it.

[[Free links]]

It takes a little more effort, but the results look more like normal text.

Access models:

Totally open

Mostly open

Access tightly controlled by administrators and page creators

Two editing models:

Plain <textarea/> with Wiki text and (maybe) some buttons to insert markup

The original and norm

WYSIWYG-like editing ‘widget’

Can be pretty sophisticated

Wiki principles

Adapted fromhttp://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples

Open

Anyone can edit any page and create new pages

Incremental

Pages can have links to pages that haven’t even been written yet.

Organic

The structure and text content of the site are open to editing and evolution.

Mundane

A few simple text conventions provide access to the most useful page markup.

Universal

The mechanisms of editing and organizing are the same as those of writing, so any writer is automatically an editor and organizer.

Overt

The formatted (and printed) output will suggest the input required to reproduce it.

Unified

Page names will be drawn from a flat space so that no additional context is required to interpret them. [Not the case in some wikis.]

Precise

The title of a page will indicate its content, and will be constructed to avoid most name clashes, typically by forming noun phrases.

Tolerant

Interpretable (even if undesirable) behavior is preferred to error messages.

Observable

Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any visitor to the site.

Convergent

Duplication can be discouraged or removed by finding and citing similar or related content.

Introduction

Go to the wiki for our workshop – the URL is on your handout (http://tinyurl.com/fosvw) [this leads to http://gslis.simmons.edu/mw/sandbox/Wiki_Training]

Edit your user page, adding a link to the main page for the workshop

Use a free link: [[Wiki training]]

Follow the link to that page

Don’t edit this page

Go back to your user page

Edit it, adding a link to a wiki page (which doesn’t exist yet) about a hobby or interest of yours

E.g., “I like to go [[water skiing]] in the winter.”
You can put in anthing you want – a favorite poem saying or poem, a sentence or two about yourself, anything. Just try to keep it clean…

Click on the link to your hobby page and write something there.

Try experimenting with the formatting.

More terminology

Pages vs. topics vs. articles vs. nodes

Sometimes pages in a wiki are called topics or articles or, to be reallyabstract and computer sciency, nodes.

Web

Sometimes a collection of wiki pages is called a web. Confusing, but true!

Interwiki

Refers to the ability to make links from one wiki to another.

Wiki etiquette

We all own it

User pages are an exception

Sign what you say

And don’t change others’ signed contributions without explanation

Don’t be rude

Do fix obvious mistakes

Like typos and bad grammar
But don’t complain about other people’s mistakes

Know who you’re writing for

Explain controversial changes (if such a facility exists)

Have fun

Don’t be afraid to break it

Most important: Don’t try to be perfect

A wiki is a living, growing organism. You can always make it perfect later. For now, just make it good enough.

What are wikis good for?

Collaboration

Personal notetaking

Bookmarks

Easy, piecemeal web site construction

Start simple, add more whenever you have time and the inclination

What are they bad for?

Large-scale databases

Any web site that you want to keep tightly controlled

Kinds of wikis

Boring but useful

Home page

Blog

Interesting

Knowledge repository

[More?]

Kinds of wiki pages

Think of these as prototypes. [I’ll show one example of each. —Paul.]

Definitional

http://gslis.simmons.edu/mw/sandbox/Rutabaga

Encyclopedic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamster

Discussion

Discussion about what belongs in a specific wiki page is generally kept in a separate (‘meta’) page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hamster

‘Thread mode’

a.k.a. ‘Chat mode’ – not wikis’ strength(?)

Table of contents

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?StartingPoints

Guide

Like annotated tables of contents, narrative in form
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?StartingPoints (more so at the beginning than the end)

User page

Magical

RecentChanges, AllTopics, etc.
http://

Categories

Show how to ‘tag’ pages with a category, then follow the link to the category page and folow the backlink to see other pages in that category. [Do categories work this way in MediaWiki, or is there some shortcut?]

Sandbox

What makes a wiki succeed?

Not these things:

Not the technology

Not the number of users

But these things:

Common interest

Inclusion, not exclusion

Barn raising

BarnRaising occurs when a community actively decides to come to the same place at the same time to help achieve some specific goal. … BarnRaising is part of the difference between SlashDot and wiki. With SlashDot the barn is already raised – the OpeningStatement already written – before you start, and everyone just sits around bitchin' about it.
— http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?BarnRaising

Most important: the wiki must be about something that matters to its users and to which they feel they have something to contribute

What makes a wiki fail?

Not these things:

Not spam

Not users who don’t contribute

Not controversy

Not bad writing

Not difference in opinion on details

But these things:

Lack of focus – going in too many directions at once

But that can be OK – just split the wiki – think of it as a large-scale refactoring

Bickering to the point where users are turned off

Mismatched expectations

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CommunityExpectation

Edit wars

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EditWar

People just lose interest

It happens, and it’s no big deal.

Challenges

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?GreatChallengesToWikis

Case studies

[These are experiences I had setting up two wikis at work several years ago. —Paul.]

JIOng

Project management – design and implementation notes, diary

Why it worked

TP wiki

Office documentation

Why it failed

David

dwiggipedia

Wikis, wikis everywhere

[Mention that there are many different wiki implementations, and give a couple of examples]

TiddlyWiki – a wiki all in one Web page

This is when you stop thinking of wiki pages and start thinking in terms of nodes.

http://www.wikimatrix.org/wizard.php

It’s a wiki itself, of course!

Sample questions:

Would you like to install your own wiki software or put your wiki on a server hosted by someone else?

Do you want pages stored in files or a database?