This document provides an overview of wiki technologies and their history. It discusses how wikis originated in the 1990s and were popularized by Wikipedia in the early 2000s. Key features of wikis are outlined, such as their open source nature, ease of editing, and support for collaboration. Wikipedia's enormous growth and collaborative model are also summarized. The document concludes with an introduction to using the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia.
1. Wiki technologies
27 November 2009 - Yannis Elpidis - ioannis@gmail.com
2. Some web history...
• The 80s - Experimenting with the idea of the Web
• The early 90s - Growth and Commercialising
• The late 90s - .dot com big bang and decadence
• The early 00s - Putting things in place, broadband and web services become
popular
• Last 6 years - It is everywhere...
and the result is...
3. Web 2.0
Web 2.0 aka Web (with some tidying up)
• It was supposed to be like that since day one
• Web Services vs Software Development
• Tons of Information that needs to be sorted, filtered, evaluated and finally
delivered to the end users. Everything (well almost) is there... but where?
• Allow users to easily publish content (more information)
• Collaboration (even more information)
• Content quality
4. Web 2.0
...and some popular web services
• Wikis (Wikipedia, WikiTravel, WikiBooks, Wiktionary)
• Web Applications (Invoicing, Time Tracking, Emails, Image Editing)
• Social Networking (MySpace, Facebook)
• Portals (Drupal, Joomla, Typo3, Plone, Xoops etc.)
• Blogs (Wordpress, Blogspot)
• Audio,Video and Picture Sharing (Vimeo,Youtube, DailyMotion)
5. Wikis a.k.a quickies
• Create new and Edit existing content via a web browser... quickly
• Format content by using simplified markup languages (Wiki Code, HTML/
CSS) and/or WYSIWYG editors
• Usually used to create collaborative websites
6. Wikis a bit of history
• First Wiki was written by Ward Cunningham in 1994
• Although WikiWikiWeb (Ward’s Wiki) was becoming popular by time...
• ...it wasn’t until 2001, when Wikis introduced to the general public by the
early success of Wikipedia
• Since then we had the development of MediaWiki (2002) and many “Wiki”
alternatives (in PHP, JSP, Python, Perl etc)
• Now, there are thousands of websites based on a Wiki technology
• ...but what made the Wikis so special?
7. Wikis and what’s cool about them
• Mainly open source w.k.a “Free”
• Fast and secure
• Easy to setup (for admins) and easier to use (for end users)
• Ideal for collaboration
• Versioning support
• User roles
• Tracking - Auditing
8. Wikipedia a bit of history
• Once upon a time there was Nupedia. An encyclopedia populated and
reviewed by experts. Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.
• Wikipedia started as a complementary project to support Nupedia
providing “draft” articles for further review.
• Quickly it overtook Nupedia and became very very popular.
• English version reached 500.000 articles in 2005, 1 million in 2006 and now
has over 3 million articles. Has nearly 9.000.000 pages views per... HOUR!
• Available in 271(!) languages. Greek version was over 46.000 articles. In total
there are more than 14.000.000 articles!
9. Wikipedia how it works
• In January 2001 there was UseModWiki written in Perl by
Clifford Adams.
• Then in January 2002 Magnus Manske developed a Wiki
written in PHP...
• ...supported by MySQL.
• 6 months later is was rewritten by Lee Daniel Crocker, and
was named MediaWiki.
• Since then new features are added such as support for
Templates, and Extensions.
11. MediaWiki & Wikipedia
Benefits
• Anyone can write articles (unless otherwise specified)
• Easy to edit. Click “Edit”, type and then “Save page”!
• Instant publishing. Some articles are updated seconds after a
certain event occurs.
• Large communities - Collaboration
• Content is reusable and can be cross-referenced
• Talk and discussion pages. Some material that can’t go into
the article or is being axed by an Editor can be republished
and discussed under the discussion.
• Detailed tracking and statistics per article
• Improves writing, understanding and research skills
12. MediaWiki & Wikipedia
Problems
• Reliability on large communities
• Vandalism!
• Non cited articles (mainly in Wikipedia)
HINT: Always cite a good source of information
• Anonymity of contributors (if allowed)
• Bias
• Credibility issues - Many articles cannot be used for research purposes
• Cross-links with other websites
19. MediaWiki How to Wiki
Useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_edit (Minor Edits)
http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
21. Presentation TAGS:
MediaWiki, Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, Web 2.0,
Berners-Lee, NextPC, UseModWiki, Larry
Sanger, Magnus Manske , PHP, MySQL, Ward
Cunningham, Nupedia, Clif ford Adams, Lee
Daniel Crocker, Typo3, WYSIWYG Editors,
Markup Languages
“That’s one of the
important lessons from
Wikipedia: you need to
give the community full
editorial control”
Jimmy Wales