Newsletter #102 What is a Wiki?

Created on 14/12/05

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Our last newsletter (24th November, 2005) was "The Spyware Threat"
This article is based on one that appeared in the December edition of Business to Business.

If you read any technology column, including this one, you probably know all about blogs. However the wiki (apparently Hawaiian for quick) is the poor relation of the blog in that few people seem to understand or know of them.

Where a blog normally consists of someone writing and everyone else reading, a wiki is more of a freewheeling collaboration. Perhaps the best known wiki is Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that has currently over 800,000 articles that are added or changed by a huge number of volunteers. In May this year American Web traffic measurers Hitwise reported that Wikipedia was the second most visited reference site on the Web, climbing an astonishing 618% in market share over the past year.

A wiki is usually started by someone running a project who wants feedback, needs to draft a document or who just wants to setup a central resource that everyone can access and add to. Californian-based company Socialtext (www.socialtext.com) CEO Ross Mayfield says: “The beauty of a wiki is that it starts like a Web page, then people discover that they can edit it like a word processing document.” Knowledge of HTML is generally not required.

Once participants realise they can link to other Webpages and resources, a wiki becomes far more powerful than the ubiquitous Word document that gets emailed around for comment and editing. Also once a wiki is setup anyone who wants to be notified when changes are made can be emailed alerts advising them.

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So where would you use a wiki?

1. In education, particularly at university level, they are increasingly being used for group projects and as a record of a student’s course work. Teachers can see which students are contributing to group work and can also checkout progress and offer help if required. Because wikis are Web-based they open the door for projects with students in other locations.
   
   
2. As a smart way of managing company projects, particularly those that require the writing of documents like drafting contracts, putting together marketing documents or signing off company rules. Wikis are particularly relevant today where many employees are often on the road or away from the office.
   
   
3. Wikis are a great way for companies to build an internal knowledge base that can be amended and added to as time goes on. A way of protecting and enhancing a company’s key information, rather than losing it when long term employees leave.
   
   
4. Community or interest groups can use wikis to collaborate on matters of interest like submissions to local or central government.

In the long term the wiki may have more impact on how we communicate and collaborate with others, than almost any other form of communication.

Q. How many wiki people does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. One, but anyone can change it back.

From Paul Kedrosky on http://blog.scienceofspectroscopy.info/

Newbies

If you ever want to select more than one item from a list in a Windows program - you may want to delete a number of files or open several images at once, use the 'Shift' or 'Ctrl' keys. To select a continuous range of items hold down the 'Shift' key while clicking at the top and bottom of the range. To select items that are not in a continuous group, hold down the 'Ctrl' key and click on them. Then just press "delete", "File/Open" or whatever you want to do.

Power Users

PowerToys for Windows XP are extra programs that are available to enhance Windows. They include such downloads as a Colour Control Panel Applet for professional photographers or designers, an HTML Slide Show Wizard, Tweak UI which gives access to system settings not normally available and a Power Calculator plus much more. www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

There are no sites this newsletter.

"The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe." Stephen Hawking

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Best wishes

Alex Garden

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