Transcript Wiki What? Wiki Why? Wiki How? July 15, 2007 A Special Session presentation to: Founder: Gregory Kohs 489 Lake George Circle ● West Chester,

Wiki What? Wiki Why? Wiki How?
July 15, 2007
A Special Session presentation to:
Founder: Gregory Kohs
489 Lake George Circle ● West Chester, PA 19382
302-463-1354 (cell) ● [email protected]
WIKI WHAT?
A Show of Hands
Everyone raise your hand
o
Now, lower your hand if you’ve ever personally installed and set-up your own wiki website.
o
Next, lower your hand if you’ve ever created from scratch a page or article using someone else’s wiki
site.
o
Lower your hand if you’ve ever corrected a spelling error or otherwise copyedited a page or article on
a wiki.
o
And, lower your hand if you’ve ever visited and read a page or article on a wiki website.
o
o
The following 4-minute video is for those people who either just lowered their hand, or who still
have their hand in the air.
Everyone else, I think can still benefit from this simple refresher course that tells us – in plain
English – why a wiki is cool.
Used with permission from:
Lee LeFever, the founder of
CommonCraft.com
Source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
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Who Invented the Wiki?

Howard “Ward” Cunningham is a computer programmer who started
programming the software WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on the
website of his software consultancy, Cunningham & Cunningham in
March of 1995.

You know I thought about patenting it 11 years ago, and I was a small
company and I figured, well, if I got a patent then I'd have to go out and sell
people on the idea that anyone could edit. That just sounded like something
that no one would want to pay money for.
…I also thought, well, if it is more widely used, it'll just be a calling card and a
way for people to know me. It certainly worked in that regard.
The
word
‘wiki’
since
2004
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Wikipedia : Wiki :: Aspirin : Acetylsalicylic acid
For many people, the word “wiki” practically means the same thing as “Wikipedia” – the
enormous community-edited encyclopedia that is structured upon the amazingly robust
Mediawiki open-source software.
While it is huge and has had a profound impact on information and even culture, Wikipedia is merely
one particular wiki, implemented with one type of wiki software.

2,000,000
450,000,000
1,800,000
Articles
400,000,000
Words
1,600,000
350,000,000
Articles
1,400,000
300,000,000
1,200,000
250,000,000
1,000,000
200,000,000
800,000
Words

150,000,000
600,000
400,000
100,000,000
200,000
50,000,000
0
0
Wikipedia
Britannica
Encarta
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Overview_FAQ#How_big_is_Wikipedia.3F
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

Qweki (a crude, advertising-heavy
listing of websites), Richdex (an
intermittently working listing of
websites), and AboutUs (a glossy botand human-generated listing of
websites) all outpace Wikipedia in
terms of sheer number of articles.
But Wikipedia busts them wide open if
measuring:





Source:
Users
Administrators
Edits
Images
Page views (most importantly?)
0
0
0
0
0
0
3 ,0 0
0 ,0 0
4 ,0 0
0 ,0 0
5 ,0 0
0 ,0 0
6 ,0 0
0 ,0 0
7 ,0 0
0 ,0 0
8 ,0 0
0 ,0 0
0
0
2 ,0 0
0 ,0 0
9 ,0 0
0 ,0 0
0
It came as a surprise to me, too. The
English-language Wikipedia is only the
fourth largest wiki on the Internet, in
terms of article count.
0

1 ,0 0
0 ,0 0
English Wikipedia – it’s Number Four!
Qweki
Richdex
AboutUs
English Wikipedia
German Wikipedia
French Wikipedia
Chainki
Lyric Wiki
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_wikis
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And Wikipedia is nowhere close to finished
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACP
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WIKI WHY?
AACP’s place on the web
Once the AACP
created a website, its
“nearest neighbors”
aligned themselves
in a complex web of
interrelated links.
Within a wiki, the
very same thing
takes place.
Schools are linked to
corporations, which
are linked to
pharmaceutical
formulas, which are
linked to research
scientists, who are
linked to students,
who are linked again
to schools, etc.
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Why would my institution build a wiki?
Wikipedia has proven
that no open,
community-edited
reference is ever 100%
reliable, nor immune to
vandalism or partisan
squabbles.
Course Curriculum
Lessons &
Assignments
Who will write
all this stuff?
Student Activities
Policy & Government
Will a wiki
work?
Scholarships &
Financial aid
Study Groups
In and Around Town
Student Bios
Faculty Bios
However, it has proven
that nearly 2 million
encyclopedic articles can
be written in less than
seven years.
Your school may not
“need” more than 1,000
articles to constitute a
very useful reference.
Can we trust
the students
(or faculty) to
do it well?
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Who writes the wiki?
People Patterns
90-9-1 Theory
BarnRaising
Champion
IdentityMatters
Invitation...
Look Before You Leap
Maintainer
MySpace
OverviewPages
Social Tagging
StartingPoints
Viral
Welcoming
Wiki Charter
WikiGnome
WikiZenMaster
Source:
A WikiGnome is a person who performs small edits on a wiki to continually improve its overall quality.
WikiGnomes are important to the success of a wiki because their edits increase the value of everyone
else's content, such as:
• Cosmetic editing to keep the wiki from being overrun with "weeds" (typos, misspellings, poorly
structured sentences and paragraphs)
• Add or fix links to make sure relevant content is navigable within the wiki
• Improve the flow and clarity of content improve the readability of the page
• Setting an example for other users of how and when to use the wiki
http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns
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WIKI HOW?
…with Dr. Steve Weppner of Eckerd College, of course!