what the hell is a wiki, and why do I need one?
Trust me, you do.
A Wiki is a set of web pages that any user of those pages can edit and create new pages in. They are often used to create collaborative resources, the best known of these being the Wikipedia. The editing process is typically so easy that any barrier to contribution is not related to the user’s level of technical know-how. (Here is a place to try out editing and creating new pages on a live Wiki – have a go!)
But as well as being great for group collaboration, they are also fantastic for personal use. The ease of use, and the ability to quickly create new hyperlinked pages means it’s easy to create a place for putting all those useful snippets of information that you might otherwise forget; and arrange these in to a meaningful (for you) hyperlinked system that makes retrieval of your stored information simple.
I have one that I use for work. There’s about 60 pages in there at the moment: lists of contact numbers; code snippets; pages of notes for myself on the various projects I’m involved in; links to and copies of media articles relating to my work; and documentation covering the solutions I’ve found to various technical issues I’ve come up against. In other words, lots of stuff that probably wouldn’t get recorded unless I had a super-easy way to do it.
You need one too.
And so coming up very soon I’ll be writing a very simple “how to” guide on installation and use of one of the best (and free, and works on any platform) Wiki systems available for personal use: Instiki.
Try it out, and see if you find it useful.
Heck
9 October 2005, 11:31 #
The camera moves towards a guy in the audience, someone gives him a microphone and he says:
“Alan is right! When I first read in his site about Instiki I took a look at several wikis out there and I can’t thank him enough!”
“Why is that, Heck, could you explain?”
“Sure. See, I personalized a few months ago a version of Tiddlywiki (it’s a single html file including css and javascript that rewrites itself when it’s updated) and it has substituted all PIM apps, note-taking apps, agendas, and a bunch of third party solutions that I used for different things.”
“Wow, that’s amazing!”
“I’ll say, and it’s not just fun! It’s also become the easiest way to check a valid html replacement for pesky international characters in weird languages when designing web pages, because it generates valid code on the fly (and RSS too). Oh, and it has instant search, and automatic back-up.”
“It sure has a lot of features!”
“You bet. It’s platform and OS independent (a huge plus, even if OS X had not been destroying all my apps lately), it’s a single file, and it has all the features I need in a PIM app, and the design/presentation can be changed whenever I get tired, just tweaking the CSS. I read everywhere that another version which added “GTD” (Get Things Done) to its name is wildly popular too.”
“We’ll take a note about those. Anything else you might like to say to the audience at home?”
“Oh, Wikis are so so so cool. All you need is a browser to use them. Keep spreading the word, Alan. You are so right doing it.”
“Thank you Heck. After the break, we’ll bring you the latest news about Paris Hilton, stay with us.”
;D
Alan
9 October 2005, 11:59 #
Thanks Heck.
I’ve looked at Tiddlywiki in the past, and if anything it’s a little too simple for me. I like having separate pages. But having said that, it’s by far the easiest wiki to get started ever. (Just download one file and open in your browser.)
Heck
9 October 2005, 13:10 #
Oh, I use my own tweaked version, I also modified the javascript to add functions or take out the ones I don’t use. What you would call “separate pages” I make it possible using “cards”, which can be displayed together or not on a single page. Anyway, just adding fuel to a nice fire.
So, what about Paris? Oh, wait… That’s llew’s department. ;)
ben.run
9 October 2005, 13:13 #
I’ve been using a Wiki at work for a few weeks now. We setup MediaWiki (that’s the one that Wikipedia uses). I experminted with quite a few and then settled on this one.
We are using the Wiki for coordinating our software development. Its been really handy already and is growning at quite a rate.
The main thing I liked about MediaWiki is that it looks nice straight out of the box. If you like the look of Wikipedia, then mediawiki will look like that without any configuration. A lot of the others were just plain ugly without a lot of work.
The other thing that was important is that most wikies treat a word like TwoWords as a wiki link. In software all the variables and functions names are of this form, so it is quite tedious having to mark each one as not a link when writing about them.
The only pity with MediaWiki is that its wiki markup isn’t as intuitive as some of the others. For example: ‘’italics’’ ‘’‘bold’‘’.
And I can never remember its table markup, I ened up just using html to do a table.
Some of the other ones I’ve seen have had very simple ways for building up tables.
Ben.
Ben.
Alan
9 October 2005, 15:07 #
MediaWiki is nice, but a bit over-specced for a personal Wiki.
On the WikiWords issue, some wikis now (like Instiki) allow you as an option to have links only enclosed in double square brackets [[like this]] so that avoids the problem you mention.
Instiki looks nice out of the box, and the markup is by default Textile, which is very intuitive.
But more of that later.
Mike
9 October 2005, 20:17 #
Nice.
A Wiki (or many interlated ones) will probably be the mainstay of what I’m introducing at my new work.
Well that and an actual culture of wanting to collaborate … which may take a darn sight longer than the technology :-)
Alan
9 October 2005, 21:51 #
Yeah, I’ve just started a new project at work and have set up a project wiki to go with it. I want to foster that culture of collaboration… and I think it needs to be grown through more social uses of technology like blogs and wikis rather than mandated from above.
I bet you’ll have to do quite a bit of evangelising to get it going enterprise-wide, but once you do… fantastic stuff.
ben.run
10 October 2005, 18:38 #
A wiki also makes sense for a replacement to a personal web site. They can be configured so only you can edit it while everyone can read it.
It would make a very easy way to create a web site with photos etc.
A lot easier to maintain than mucking around with Frontpage and then ftping up the files etc.
Ben.