Wiki - Type directly into webpages, publish to the web

Wikis are documents that are located on a web server instead of on your PC's hard drive. A team, workgroup, or whole company can have documents on the wiki that all in the group can easily read and modify.

Summary - a wiki is a web site that allows members with login access to:

  • Enter and edit text directly on the pages.
  • See the timeline of changes made to a page; usually you can revert to prior versions.
  • Add links into the text e.g., link to another page that has related information. Also, create links to pages that do not yet exist, then create those new pages - "link as you think" as Eugene Kim says.

Wikis are becoming common tools that support collaborative work between professionals; a group can quickly create a shared set of data, and add /modify that information going forward.

Since wikis are very unstructured, process or agreements among users is critical to successful use of wikis.

Teams that are collaborating on a project can see what others have written immediately in their browser window.

Structured Wikis combine the structure offered by the fields in database records with the user accessibility - to enter, edit or read entries - of wikis. Structured wikis are beginning to replace much more rigid, complex and costly database applications. Some examples ...

The Guide to using Wikis here on our site provides pointers and practices for use of wikis

A limitation of wikis is that organizing information on pages created by multiple people requires a "gardener" type person(s) to prune and move information around so that its coherently organized for all team members to reach intuitively.

Enterprise wiki Capabilities

  • Multiple access control across pages or sections of the wiki e.g., if team members A and B and partner C are sharing material on a Twiki instance, would have to create another, separate Twiki instance if you want just team members A and B share info. With an enterprise wiki like that from Socialtext, there is just one instance of the wiki to accomplish this. Socialtext uses term workspace to mean a set of pages on a wiki which have unique access e.g., the "marketing workspace" means the pages in the marketing section of the overall wiki instance have a unique set of users who can access it.
  • Search - when you don't know on which pages information you want resides, you'llwant to be able to search across all pages and all wikis
  • Link pages between workspaces e.g., accounting dept page and marketing dept. page …
  • Wiki pages on mobile devices … strips out all the graphic, and javascript behind buttons, etc. … sending you just text on the pages and let you edit that text … M - iki mobile wiki's
    Detach a page - work offline on those pages


Example of how effectively wikis can be used by distributed teams:

    • This is the entry page to a set of workspaces through which all of SocialText’s (open sourced) product development is being managed. Visibility into projects is based on the product / deliverable being worked in that project.  Under Current Projects, click the “I18 Project”.
    • I18 project is the Japanese localization of the SocialText wiki.  Note the project goals, schedule, phases, notes, etc. are all there.  Under “Project Phases” click the “Phase I – Infrastructure” link.
    • Phase I of I18 has two iterations, click the “Kamma Iteration – start … “
    • Now you can see the details of the people, tasks, etc. working on the Kamma Iteration segment of this large localization project.  You can see all the many tasks, who is working on them, details/status on each.  Click the light grey Revisions link in upper right hand corner to get a sense of the range of people who have changed the Kamma Iteration page.  There are a LOT of people working on this effort, and they are all updating this wiki themselves.

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