This document discusses wikis, including what they are, why they are useful, and how to choose and use them. A wiki is a type of website that allows collaborative editing of its content and structures. Wikis enable knowledge power, more accurate information through open collaboration, and institutionalization of expert knowledge. They have features like page creation, searching, viewing histories, easy navigation, links, and uploading files. Choosing a wiki depends on whether it is hosted or installed, with considerations including setup ease, storage space, customization, and security needs. Wikis can be used for knowledge management, training, and web publishing in businesses. However, they may not be suitable when strict access control, general content management, or users

1. Wiki
WHY AND HOW
RAJESH SINGAMSETTY

2. What is a Wiki?
 MediaWiki is a free software open source wiki package written in PHP,
originally for use on Wikipedia.

3. Why Wiki?
• Knowledge Power
• More accurate information
• Open collaboration
• Expert knowledge becomes Institutional knowledge

4. Features
• Create Pages
• Search Pages
• View History
• Easy Navigation
• Links
• Attach documents
• Upload media files
• Share content

5. Choosing a Wiki - Hosted
Definition: A wiki that is installed on a public server and
administered for the users.
Considerations:
• Ease of set-up.
• User invitations & limits.
• Storage space.
• Public, protected or private ($).
• Page protection.
• Customization.
• Data export capabilities.

6. Choosing a Wiki - Installed
Definition: A wiki that is installed on a private server and
administered by the users/organization. More
customizable.
Considerations:
• Skill level of users.
• Number of contributors and viewers.
• Needed security level.
• Potential size of wiki.
• Technical expertise available.
• Desire to be a wiki champion.

7. Wiki – Log in page

8. Wiki - Administration

9. %

10. Wiki - Editor

12. History

13. Editing – Wikitext
Example from MediaWiki:
What you type:
You can ''italicize text'' by putting 2 apostrophes on each side.
3 apostrophes will '''bold the text'''.
5 apostrophes will '''bold''' and ''italicize'' '''''the text'''''.
What you see:
You can italicize text by putting 2 apostrophes on each side.
3 apostrophes will bold the text.
5 apostrophes will bold and italicize the text.

16. Business Uses
Shared Repository – Information can be stored
on the wiki instead of in a desk drawer or in
someone’s email account.
Knowledge Management – As staff change,
information is located in a centralized location.
Training – Centralized information makes it easier
to train staff.

17. Business Uses
•Web Publishing – Online and easily updated for
staff or customers.
•Save Money – Possibly replace other costly
programs.

18. When not to Wiki…
• Applications that need strict access control
• General content management
• Users with limited technical skill

19. Vistaprint
Vistaprint (Wikipedia article):"We launched our
internal MediaWiki site, Vistawiki, in March 2007.
Vistawiki has been a huge success, with over 150,000
topics, thousands of active users worldwide, and
over 50 custom-written extensions. Since inception,
Vistawiki has had over 35 million page views and 1.3
million edits, and it currently averages 1500 edits per
day.
CUSTIS
We decided to use MediaWiki and since then, thanks
to its excellent extensibility and simplicity of creating
a new content, MediaWiki became a powerful
platform for corporate knowledge base with a lot of
features.
Intel Corporation
"I implemented an instance of MediaWiki for use by
all 100,000+ employees of the company. It's called
Intelpedia, and was created in November 2005. In
the first year of life, it quickly grew to over 10,000
pages, and almost 3,000 registered contributors.

20. Thank you for your time…
Rajesh Singamsetty