The Wiki Way
From Schoolforge-UK
Here is a brief introduction to using and and contributing to our Wiki. It explains the basic concepts and provides guidance on performing common tasks.
The idea of a wiki is that contributions from all members are encouraged and the content is a group effort. If you are new don't be overly concerned about messing up the pages as they can be restored (however vandalism is not tolerated and will be removed).
The MediaWiki manual at MediaWiki User's Guide explains how to use the non-content features of this wiki. A tutorial is available on Wikipedia Tutorial. See the Wikipedia wiki entry for more on wikis in general.
More specific details on contributing to this site can be found on Why create an account?.
What is a Wiki?
Tim Berners-Lee's original concept for the web always included the ability to edit any page but somehow this feature was left out of most web browsers. A wiki restores the ability to individually contribute to the otherwise passive web experience. Each page has an edit link that allows the page to be altered in a web browser by the using a simple text box to edit the content. Wikis are open so that anyone may easily contribute. With a Wiki the content is of primary importance and the presentation is less critical (no flashy graphics required).
Wikipedia: is a very successful example of the power of this way of working and has developed extensive high quality content. Wikis are excellent for creating documentation as a group and also developing ideas by discussing on page and then editing it to explain the agreed understanding. The internet excells at allowing people to work together on grass roots projects as communities and Wikis are one of the better tools it provides to do this.
It may seem that allowing anyone to edit content without control will lead to problems such as low quality and be open to abuse but that is not the experience of wiki users. Allowing everyone to freely contribute actually increases quality and removes bottlenecks that slow content creation and review. For example Wikipedia found that with a formal 'review before publish' process growth was extremely slow but once they changed to a wiki using 'publish followed by open peer review' growth was rapid leading to the extensive high quality content that is there now (and is still improving). Any wiki will have 'chief editors' who keep and eye on the editoral policy and provide some direction.
Quality is ensured by the fact that many people view the pages and the majority are committed to quality and group identitiy. If someone sees a spelling mistake they can fix it immediately; they do not have to email someone and hope it gets fixed. There can be problems with vandalism but it is usually undone quickly, helped by that fact that a full audit trail of changes is available for every page and rollback is made easy. Community members also communicate with email or wiki discussion pages to decide on issues such as conventions or over all structure.
When you create a wiki page it need not be perfect as you can expect the others in the community to improve and develop it. The flip side is that you must also expect others to alter your work. It can be very rewarding to see someone building on your work or to make a small improvement to anothers efforts. That is community in action. It is very easy to contribute as the syntax for editing pages is very simple (though it is posisble to use more advanced features from the web's HTML language). You can access the wiki from anywhere that has a web browser (assuming it is not on a private intranet or server)
Like the web a wiki has a very loose structure, pages of information that have links to other pages. Individual wiki communities often develop their own way of doing things by developing a common style.
This wiki uses MediaWiki which is the engine behind wikipedia. The features discussed may be specific to MediaWiki but many other engines support such features.
Browsing
You can explore a wiki by just following links from page to page as designed by the editors (which includes you). However there are other ways of exploring:
- Recent Changes: shows you what has be happening recently. This is also available as a RSS feed;
- Search: search the entire wiki for words;
- Special Pages: various lists such as popular pages;
- Page history: lets you see who made a change and when;
Although you do not need to create a user account to browse there are some additional options available if you do. One of the most useful is Watchlists which let you mark pages to be listed on your watchlist when they change. You may be able to get an email when a change occurs.
Contributing
To contribute you just need to click the 'Edit This Page' link on any existing page. You then update the text in the text box that appears and the neither use 'show preview' to see how the changes will look or 'Save page' to commit your changes.
You will note that the text in the edit box is not quite the same as that seen when viewing the page . The text you type is in Wiki syntax which allows control over the formatting and explains the need for preview. Wiki syntax has many options but you commonly use only a few simple cases and the toolbar above the text box can be used to make it even easier. Remember that with a wiki the content is important and not the presentation.
The commonly used Wiki Syntax features are
- Link to another page on the wiki (internal link): The page name surrounded by [[ ... ]]. Note spaces become underscores in the page web address. e.g. [[Main Page | Home Page]] gives Home Page;
- Link to another webpage (external link): The page address and display text surrounded by [ ... ]. e.g. [http://news.bbc.co.uk BBC News] gives BBC News;
- Bold: surround with ''' ... '''. e.g. '''Bold text''' gives Bold text;
- Italic: surround with '' ... ''. e.g. ''Italic text'' gives Italic text;
- Headings: On own line surrounded with ==...== (level 1) or ===...=== (level 2)etc.;
- Ordered lists: each item on its own line starting with a #;
- Unordered lists: each item on its own line starting with a *;
You can find out full details of Wiki Syntax on Editing help Remember you can always edit any page to see how it was done and then leave without saving.
New pages can be created by going to a non-existing page and editing it. A non-existing page can be 'visited' by created an internal link to it and then following the link or by editing the web page address in the browser address box.
Have fun.
