A wiki wiki wiki session

Wiki wiki is the first Hawai'ian term I learned on my first visit to the islands. The airport counter agent directed me to take the wiki wiki bus between terminals. I said what? He explained that wiki wiki meant quick. I was to find the quick bus. I did pick up a book about the language before my return home. I learned many things from this but wiki wiki is the word that sticks the most.

Correspondence on the Etymology of Wiki, Ward Cunningham

Software with an attitude

There are many flavors of wiki software around, such as Dokuwiki, Tiddly Wiki, Zim wiki, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_software

The software that we're using for the XPUB & Lens Based wiki is called MediaWiki. MediaWiki is free software licensed under the GPL, currently maintained by the WikiMedia Foundation, a non-profit who also takes care of a range of other wiki project, including Wikipedia, Wiki Commons and Wikidata.

Ward Cunningham initiated the WikiWikiWeb project, an early version of wiki software, in 1995. This wiki hosted the "Portland Pattern Repository".

You're browsing a database with a program called Wiki Wiki Web. And the program has an attitude. The program wants everyone to be an author. So, the program slants in favor of authors at some inconvenience to readers.

The quote above was posted on the WikiWikiWeb; sadly the original page where this quote comes from seems to no longer be online.

Where can you feel this attitude?

Important about wiki's was the mode of collaboration it allowed for. According to Ward Cunningham People discovered that they can create something with other people, that they don't even know. But they come to trust and they make something that surprises them in terms of its value.

The wiki was made for speed and easiness of writing and publishing on the Web. And to be moving from read to write mode quickly.

Wiki tour

Collaboration features

each page is a (non-templated) wiki page
Special:RecentChanges
Special:NewFiles
(and there are many more "Special" pages)
View history
User pages (+ User namespace)
Random page (fun)
reusable (mini) templates
very customizable (what happened to our main page last upload preview feature???)

XPUB related links

Wiki editing

it's good to know is that there are two editors that you can use to edit your text: using the visual editor or using the wikitext editor.

Visual editor

to use it, click Edit
uses a WYSIWYG editor
Visual editor user guide

Wikitext editor

to use it, click Edit source
uses a specific mark up language: wikitext

Wikitext syntax

A good place to start your dive into wikitext is → Wiki Tutorial

and the main MediaWiki documentation → Wiki syntax user guide

To get started, you can use the cheatsheet below!

Take a deep dive!

create your User page!
add an image
create a new wiki page and add it to the Category:Hello
create another new wiki page, this time in your User namespace!
add an audio file
check the RecentChanges
add yourself to the Students list
tip: you can use HTML and inline CSS on wiki pages, most HTML elements and CSS rules work
tip: you can change wiki skin in the preferences, this only changes the interface for you!
make a Template for a banner that can be used by others, for example a banner that says: "this page is under construction"

If you don't know how to do something, you can check the documentation. We would recommend checking:

the Wiki Tutorial on this wiki
https://mediawiki.org

Wikitext cheatsheet

''italics'' 
 
 '''bold''' 
 
 '''''bold and italics''''' 
 
 ==standard header== 
 
 ===next-level header=== (...and so on) 
 
 [[Internal link]] 
 
 [[Internal link|alternate text]] 
 
 [http://example.com text of external link] 
 
 [[Category:Example]] (category tag) 
 
 [[:Category:Example]] (link to category) 
 
 ---- (horizontal line) 
 
 * bulleted item 
 
 # numbered item 
 
 :indentation 
 
 ::double indentation (...and so on) 
 
 ;term : definition 
 
 [[File:Image-name.jpg|thumb|frame|Caption text]]
 
 {{:Transcluded page name}} 
 
 {{Template name}} (call to template) 
 
 #REDIRECT [[Page name]]