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Wiki, a Shared Blog for Distributed Teams, and for Everybody
Writable webs empower people to share knowledge effectively and to be more productive
- Wiki, a Blog (Weblog) for groups: Communities can organize and share content in an organic and free manner
- Extended with the right set of functionality, a Wiki can be applied to distributed teams to schedule, manage, document, and support their daily activities
- The web as a whiteboard for everybody.
Conference talk at VCWI 2005 IT Seminar in Eindhoven, Sept 2005BR Jun Hu BR MailTo(j.hu@tue.nl)BR Slides available from [http://id00243.id.tue.nl/JunHu/Events/WikiYourWeb]
Ways to create and share content and knowledge
Email and Mailing_list
Challenges of Static web pages
- Some content is outdated
- When was the page last updated?
- Incomplete content
- Difficult to find content
- Inconsistency across departments
- Special tools, knowledge and permission required to maintain
Content is static, it has a webmaster syndrome
- If someone discovers a page with incorrect or insufficient information, (s)he will often ignore it because it takes too much time to find out who the webmaster is and to write an e-mail requesting an update
Challenges of Distributed Teams
- Open questions:
- How to get virtual teams working together efficiently?
- How to get everyone in sync?
- How to avoid duplication of efforts?
- Typical answers:
- Scheduled conference calls
- Occasional visits
- Shared network disks
- Instant Messaging (IRC, AIM, ICQ, etc)
Challenges of Distributed Teams
- E-mail and mailing lists are great, but:
Post and reply vs. post and refine
- Great for discussion, but ... hard to find "final consensus" on a thread
- E-mail is not hyper-linked and is not structured, content can't be grouped easily into related topics
- E-mail and attachments are not version controlled and it is difficult to determine the history of a document
Challenges of CMS
- Rigid structure (can be good and bad)
- Control over content more important over free form knowledge sharing
- Content is typically structured hierarchically or in table format, with limited cross-linking between pages
- Limited support for unstructured content, or content that has "structure and exceptions"
User Generated Content
- Forums
- Get lots of momentum and conversation happening, but things tend to vanish into the archives and get lost. Topics can also get off-track quickly
- Blogs
- More directed than forums, but less flexible.
- Wikis
- Most flexible, great ability to cross-link information. Potential to be ruined by vandalism / revert wars. Less structured format doesn't lend itself to debate / discussion / conversation as well, but can result in a more coherent final position.
Blogs vs. Wikis
- Blog: (Weblog)
- Key: Easy to publish opinions of individual in regular intervals
- Media to express individual voice
- "Post media" (like e-mail), sometimes with feedback and talkback
Usually hosted service (e.g. Six Apart's [http://www.typepad.com/ TypePad])
Wiki: (WikiWikiWeb)
- Key: Easy to create and refactor on content owned by group
- Media to express group voice, deemphasizing identity of individuals
- "Refactor media", content may change at any time
- Usually open source software, installed on own server
- Some Blogs have Wiki-like features, some Wikis have Blog capabilities
- Merge over time?
Email vs. Wiki
attachment:email.png |
attachment:wiki.png |
wiki |
What is a Wiki?
WikiWikiWeb = Writable Web
- As quick to contribute as e-mail
- As easy to use as a website
WardCunningham implemented the original WikiWikiWeb in 1995 to collaborate on software patterns
Inspired by HyperCard; some call it a Blog for groups
- Wiki design principles:
- Open
- Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit
- Incremental
- Pages can cite other pages, including pages that have not been written yet
- Organic
- The structure and text content of the site is open to editing and evolution
- more
What is a Wiki? (cont.)
The original WikiWikiWeb has these features:
- Read-write web, every page can be edited using just a browser
- HTML form based editing
- Pages are served dynamically
Pages are linked automagically with camel case words LikeThis or words ["Like This"]
- Simple markup, no need to learn HTML
Try the WikiSandBox
- Over 100 Wiki engines based on the original Wiki idea, mostly open source
- Wiki has geek appeal
- Mainly used by Internet communities and academia
Wiki Tools
Open Source WikiEngines: Download and install
MoinMoin: Used by internet communities (Python)
[http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl UseModWiki]: Used by internet communities (Perl)
[http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/ PhpWiki]: Popular Wiki (PHP)
[http://www.flexwiki.com/ FlexWiki]: .NET based (C#)
[http://snipsnap.org/ SnipSnap]: Wiki + Blog (Java)
- Hosted Wiki services: Wiki farms
[http://www.socialtext.com/products/workspace/ Socialtext Workspace]: Open source Wiki (Kwiki) with Blog extensions; for corporate use ($$$)
[http://www.editme.com/ EditMe]: Simple Wiki and Blog ($4.95/month)
[http://www.teamflux.com/FrontPage Teamflux]: Simple Wiki ($20/quarter/person)
- Wiki appliance: Wiki in a preconfigured box
[http://www.socialtext.com/products/appliance/ Socialtext Appliance]: Based on Kwiki with some proprietary extensions
What is Wiki good for?
- Company Intranet
- Community Builder
- Educational Collaboration
- Personal Web Site or Blog
- Small Business Site
- Online Notebook
- Personal Information Manager
Examples: Wikipedia
attachment:wikipedia.png
Examples: Wikipedia (cont.)
[http://www.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedia]: Wiki + Encyclopedia
- A free encyclopedia that is being written collaboratively by its readers
- Project started in January 2001
- The most active public Wiki: There are over 290,000 articles in English; more in 50 other languages
Anyone in the world can edit any page.
Doesn't that lead to chaos?
- Domain experts contribute
- Well defined policies for contributing and handling content
- Graffiti gets removed quickly (rollback available)
IBM's [http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/ research] on history flow of articles ([http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/gallery.htm gallery])
Content can be freely distributed and reproduced under the terms of the [http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License, GNU Free Documentation License]
Examples: WordPress Manual
attachment:wordpress.png
Examples: Chinese Python
attachment:chinesepython.png
Examples: FreeDesktop.org
attachment:freedesktop.png
Examples: WikiTravel.org
attachment:wikitravel.png
Examples: Sensei's Library
attachment:sensei.png
Examples: Watermark Diary
attachment:hushui.png
Wiki Basics A
- Wikis are collections of pages:
attachment:wikipages.png
Wiki Basics B
- Every page in a wiki is editable
- Just click, type and save!
attachment:wikieditable.png
Wiki Basics C
- Every page has a name
- Linking to a page is as simple as writing its name
attachment:wikilinks.png
Controlling changes
- Version control
attachment:versioncontrol.png
Controlling changes
- Version control
- diff
attachment:diff.png
Controlling changes
- Version control
- diff
- recent changes
attachment:recentchanges.png
Plain Text Editing
- MoinMoin
attachment:plaintext.png
Pesudo Rich Text Editing
- Wikepedia
attachment:pseudorichtext.png
Rich Text Editing
- EditMe
attachment:richtext.png
Live Demo
Worries
E-mail Habit - I prefer e-mail
E-mail doesn't scale - new people, new technology, new customers, new partners...
Shared knowledge vs. 'Owners' - I don't want to edit someone else's page
- Wiki culture: nobody 'owns' pages, and any change can be built upon
- First person to create page is not the owner!
'No control' syndrome - This leads to chaos
- Wikis provide access control.
- Soft security, audit trail, peer review
Wiki syntax - yet another language
- Wiki is just plain text, e.g., just '''do it''', you will do it
- Use the help pages, doesn't take long to learn
Questions and Answers
attachment:qna.gif
References
Some of the content of this talk is from an excellent introduction to TWiki by [wiki:Main/PeterThoeny Peter Thoeny]: [http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiPresentation11Aug2005 Wiki Collaboration and Wiki Applications for the Enterprise]
MoinMoin: see Frontpage. This is the wiki I am using to give this presentation.
[http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wiki.htm Wikis] at HowStuffWorks
More introduction about Wiki see Wiki entry on Wikipedia.
- For people who are seriously interested
- The Wiki way: quick collaboration on the Web, B Leuf, W Cunningham - 2001 - Boston: Addison-Wesley
Emerging Technologies: Blogs and Wikis: Environments for On-line Collaboration B Godwin-Jones, A Tools, S Tools - Language Learning & Technology, 2003