AKICOLJ - Wiki Intro?

[sraun]

I'm thinking about trying to do some stuff with a wiki, and ... well,
let's just say I'm confused.

Anyone have pointers to a good 'Introduction to Wiki'? I'm looking for
a practical 'how do I make them work' document, with maybe side-notes
on theory.

Comments

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Not to belabor the obvious, but have you tried looking it up on Wikipedia?

[sraun]

I hadn't, I just tried, I got exactly what I expected. A wiki-based 'how to use wikipedia'. The problem here is that my knowledge of wiki's is very basic - I know how to use the Search box, I know how to follow links. I have been told that intra-wiki links are typically not generated using standard HTML codes, but rather a specialized wiki coding standard. The wikipedia help system is a mix of mostly 'how to do stuff the wikipedia way' and a little 'how to wiki'.

I guess part of what I need is 'setting up a wiki from scratch'. I've got software that supports a wiki, and an empty template to start things out from, but it is not intuitively obvious to me how to make it work.

[spiffikins]

When I wanted to play with wiki, I found vqwiki - "very quick wiki". It worked very well for me, because it's a java web application (not sure what other wikis are written in) and I have many web application servers just lying around, since that's what my entire work environment is.

I dropped the .war file into my webapps folder, pointed my apache at it, and was up and running within 5 minutes. The wiki came with some pre-built pages that had enough instructions that I was able to start generating pages within a minute or two, and, though I'm certain there are many many features that I'm not taking advantage of, I've been getting what I need (an online repository of howto's and notes for myself and my coworkers) for the last 3 years without any problems at all.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Long and short of it for me:
- They're web pages everyone can edit (although some may offer permissions)
- Some (the better ones) are version controlled, so you can get back or compare stuff.
- They use a simplified markup
- The linking mechanism lets you just make something a WikiWord and you get a link - which encourages new pages.

Wikis encourage dynamic and evolving content. Didn't get it right the first time? Someone will change it. Not quite the structure you're looking for? Someone will refactor it.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Which Wiki software are you using? I use MoinMoin myself - it's very easy to use and configure.

The basics usually are: Edit the homepage (there should be some Help on how to edit), and add a link to another page there. In a plain-text wiki editor, you normally linkify a page by entering [[PageName]]. You then click on the link you've just created, and you are taken to that new page. Edit that one. But again, the Help or Readme for the wiki software - some of them even have tutorials -should tell you about the basics.

You can check out the c2 site (the first wiki), for some good info on how wikis work (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb). Some of it is specific to their wiki engine, but the principles are universal. I particularly suggest checking out the WikiWikiWebFaq, WhyWikiWorks, WhyWikiWorksNot, and WikiGettingStartedFaq.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Wiki links to other Wikis are the name in [[double brackets]]. Test it out in Preview before you make the final edit. Remember to annotate the reason why you're making the changes.

Practice with the Talk pages first, especially for questions. Remember to log in and sign Talk entries with your name -- four tildes... ~~~~

Wiki is close enough to html that I can make entries, but different enough that I rely on others to come later and clean up the coding. There are a lot of those helpful people.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

How links, and everything else, are done is specific to the particular Wiki software. The "wikiness" is the idea that anybody can edit; the format is specific (Twiki, which we use at work, mostly takes "wiki words", anything bicapped, and turns them into internal links automatically; you have to use "!" to turn it off. I prefer the Mediawiki [[]] convention.)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I believe Wikipedia has a "sandbox" for people just getting started to play in, where you can try things and see what happens. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox

Setup is also very software-specific.

Deciding what organization is right, and how to get things to come out that way, is also an interesting question.