ID Nerd

wiki about wiki

Page history last edited by prabha 2 yrs ago

Introduction: Defining a Wiki is Actually Difficult (for me )

I offered a brief, generic explanation of what a wiki is, but to really define wiki is almost limiting to what a wiki can DO, and this information might be best served in a "need to know" basis. There are variations among wiki applications in terms of creating, editing, and managing files. One might think, since this is a different technology that what we are used to (HTML) that you might need to learn wiki markup or XML. This is not the case. In fact, Web 2.0/3.0 technology has liberated educators from really needing to know any code to create their content. PBWiki, for example, has a text editor built in so you don't need to use any special languages or formats. The tools are similar to any e-mail program or basic word processing application. All you need to be able to do to use a wiki is organize your information (I make that sound easy!). In a wiki, this is done by creating links - these links automatically generate a new page in the wiki that you can then edit, or leave for later. This concept is consistent throughout all wikis - the rest is wide open.

So if you have been ignoring the Internet since someone tried to force you to use COBOL or DOS for your educational technology needs, it's actually safe to come out and play now :).

Defining a Wiki Depends on Who You Ask

I have been noticing a trend lately on the types of answers I get from people with different backgrounds when I ask "what is a wiki" or "how do they work?" This is going to depend on that particular person's experience with wiki. One of my sources told me that wiki technology has evolved from / is connected to the "semantic web." I thought I had a vague idea what this is, but I don't :) - and maybe I misunderstood because I'm not, um, that knowledgeable... but I think I can safely say that this new technology that is being developed has to do with being able to present content in a variety of formats. Wikipedia defines the term thusly:

The semantic web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.^[1] It derives from W3C director Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web]

Meaning, a database is organizing your stuff for you based on the clues you give it (tags, links, etc.) and reorganizing it for various types of delivery??? I don't know. It's almost laughable that I'm attempting to know this - and I'm not sure my readers are going to care.... (but hey, it's nice to know what some of the fancy words are... you can say them at parties or on job interviews...). More information by people much smarter than me can be found here:

http://infomesh.net/2001/swintro/

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/11/01/semanticweb/index.html

Why am I telling you this??? Well, it means that some wikis have "semantic web" capabilities... meaning your content is liberated from the medium (choke on that, Marshall McCluan).

PB Wiki also has other gadgets that their programmers have developed to help you build things in their wiki that would be very laborious to construct on your own (though I'm sure there are shortcuts you can take to incorporate something like this in opensource wikis, I just don't, personally, know any!).

Take this QuickStart menu, for example (left). This is not a feature you'd see necessarily built in to a wiki. PB Wiki has built in templates for creating a classroom, syllabus, group project, and other types of templates. Commerical wikis add in tools like this to allow more people to be able to take advantage of navigation and other types of features that the average person would not program.

[wiki mark up]

If you view the source of this page, you'll see that PBWiki uses HTML tagging and not wiki markup (which makes me think PBWiki is really like, a different thing altogether from mediaWiki or other types of wikis). Maybe a better term for "Commercial Wiki" would be "Prebuilt" - meaning someone else has done the code work to make it possible for you to be the content developer.

The next burning question is, how do I start using one? What are my choices? If I were to create a decision tree, the first factors I would look at are:

Cost
Ease of Use
Limitations / Space
Features

Then I would explore what my needs are. When I first began researching this topic, I was soon overwhelmed by the volume of tools that are available. I'm a regular person, I just want something easy, cheap (free), and that I'm not going to have to mess with. This seems to be the appeal of a lot of Web 2.0 / 3.0 technology for the user. We are liberated from database administration, site hosting, FTP, and all the other "mysteries" previously involved with generating online content.

WHAT'S THE CATCH? :)