Want a Wiki

What is a Wiki?
I mean I've heard of Wikipaedia and Wiki leaks, (guess that's about bad plumbing).

But cant work out what a Wiki actually is, perhaps I'm wikistupid.

 

Well volunteered that Man

Let us know if you need a hand with it, i'm sure there will be other members willing to help

 

A Wiki is a series of interlinked articles, where anyone (or anyone "with suitable trust and permissions") can edit the page(s).

So if you see an article on which you have some knowledge, or an additional opinion etc., you can edit the content to add that, and over time it becomes the definitive article on that subject.

Downsides can be that there become edit-wars - you add something, I remove it, you add it back again - Rinse & Repeat!! and learned people's "content" can be removed or neutered (or even "de-faced") by someone with less/little/no knowledge/skill [related to the article - rather than Wiki-skill !!]

 

Typically Wikis use a simple formatting mark-up - so you can use things like *bold* for text you want to be in bold, and _underline_ for text you want to be underlined.

!Heading Level 1
!!Heading Level 2
!!!Heading Level 3

and so on, so easy for people to learn to use.

Links either use so called CamelCase - Leading capital letter, no word-spacing, each word starts with a capital letter, or you can put them in [square brackets].

So: GrowingRoses or [Growing Roses]

You write the article, including such links - which are, in effect, just the Title Names of other pages. If a suitable page already exists, with that name, then it is automatically linked; if not such page exists the link is show styled differently, and when you click on it you get a blank page - ready for you to write the first version of the article. Thus is is very easy to add pages/articles as the need arises, and to interlink all the pages/articles in the site

 

Right thanks for the info Kristen, I think I get the idea.

Wiki????? where did that come from?
Just Googled it,, Hawaiian word apparently

 

http://www.wikia.com/Wikia

 

The overriding idea is that its a document that can be shared/edited by any user, so there is no barrier to anyone that wants to be an "editor" and to add a snippet of knowledge / correct an error/ommission.

Like everything: the panacea isn't quite as good as the hype ...

We use one at work for all internal documents that need to be shared. It ensures that everyone is looking at the Wiki web page for the "current" version of the document, rather than perhaps digging out an old email, with a now-out-of-date attachment of a Word document, and thus embarking on something using out-of-date DOCs

Hawaiian for "quick quick" I think, but why a Hawaiin word was choose I have no idea ... I'm sure there is an equally good Latin Moto that could have been used

"cito scribe" perhaps ...

 

Just bearing in mind what has been said.
I'm assuming someone has to keep an eye on things fairly closely.

Why doesn't the info get confusing and garbled? Bearing in mind someone might add something really relevant, only to have it deleted by someone else who then supplies a lot of misleading info.

 

Yes, that happens. Decent Wiki software stores all previous edits (i.e. a version history) and some people with loads of time on their hands "revert" edits that are harmful. But, yeah, it has been known for malicious users to remove all content, or replace it with something childish.

You might as well have a website/blog with X-Author-editors IMHO.

The "markup" that Wiki uses is very easy to understand ... but that is a part of its undoing as it gets in the way sometimes. e.g. to prevent things being treated as Links you can put them in Quotes, so they are taken literally. But the quotes don't show (fair enough) ... but then if you DO actually want quotes to show you have to double-them-up - e.g.

I want this to show ""verbatim""

and at that point I think it starts to become a PITA. I'd prefer a proper WYSIWYG editor, or even to hand code a markup like HTML with is definitely "intrusive" to write, but at least it is unambiguous!

So, I'm a reluctant user and not a great fan.

The concept of a crowd-sourced "encyclopaedia" of knowledge on a specialist subject (like Gardening if you like) is fine, the Wiki markup format is dreadful IMHO, and the issues with malicious editing, and arguments between Person-A making an edit to Person-B's content and Person-B wanting to remove it is a threat.

In real-world crowd-sourced Wikis, like Wikipedia for example, there is a real issue that world-class experts on a particular subject don't have enough "clout" to get blatant un-truisms removed/reversed ... there are far more people in the crowd to vote-down the expert's knowledgeable opinion ... sadly.

 

I, for one, don't like this idea! The idea of members changing what has already been posted is not a good thing, it will create issues between those that want the original left as it is and those who don't, as you say Kristen 'edit-wars'.

If it happens here on GC, I'm gone!!!

 

Don't panic Captain Mainwaring!

It wouldn't be a replacement for the Forum, just that it could be a useful resource in the style of "Frequently Asked Questions" or a series of articles like: "The collective best knowledge on How To Grow A Carrot" ... something like that.

 

But haven't we already got that as 'Sticky's'?

 

I would describe the difference as:

Sticky's are a conversation, which will include whatever wibble and backchat takes place - might be pages and pages of posts. Its a lot to read when someone new is looking for a "soup to nuts" read of "How to grow the best carrots"

An "editable" article (Wiki, or something else) could take that combined knowledge into a more concise article ...

But personally I don't think its viable.

 

Looking at it from what I can tell, it would only work if it was moderated.
By that I mean any deletions or additions would need to be looked at by a mod before being posted.
But that sounds like it could be a lot of work for someone, especially during the early days.