WikiCourse/BasicIntroductionHandOut

What is a Wiki?

• a technology for collaborative creation of internet and intranet pages

• Wiki-Wiki is hawaii and means fast

Principles

• Fast - fast editing, communicating and easy to learn

• Open - everybody may read and edit everything

• Uncomplicated - everything works in a standard browser

• Easy - no HTML knowledge necessary, simply formatted text

• Simple - Content over Form (content counts, not the super-pretty appearance)

• Secure - every change is archived, nothing gets lost

• Interlinked - Links between pages are easy to make

• Flexible

  • Personal Information Management, Knowledgebases, Brainstorming

  • Collaboration, Coordination and Communication platform

  • Creating documentation and slide shows

  • etc...

For details see HelpForBeginners.

The First Steps

• Help with problems or questions: HelpContents () and HelpMiscellaneous/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

• UserPreferences

  • Name (appears on RecentChanges)

  • Email address for subscribing to page change emails and retrieving a lost login/password

  • Personal preferences

  • Link with User-ID ( in any case, put a bookmark on that)

• Structure of pages

  • Navigation: Quicklinks, Icons link to system actions (HelpOnNavigation)

  • "Recently visited pages" (see UserPreferences)

  • Content

  • Quick search and additional actions (HelpOnActions)

Details see HelpForBeginners.

How do I navigate?

Searching and Navigation:

• Backlinks (click on title)

• Icons at top right (HelpOnNavigation)

• Title search and full text search at bottom of page

Good places to start your Wiki exploration:

• WikiSandBox: Sandbox page to play around and experiment with

• RecentChanges: What has changed recently?

• SiteNavigation: A list of the different indices of the Wiki

• FindPage: Searching the Wiki by various methods

• TitleIndex: A list of all pages in the Wiki

• WordIndex: A list of all words in page titles (i.e. a list of keywords/concepts in the Wiki)

Using the Editor

To edit a page, just click on or on the link "EditText" at the end of the page. A form will appear enabling you to change text and save it again. A backup copy of the previous page's content is made each time.

You can check the appearance of the page without saving it by using the preview function - without creating an entry on RecentChanges; additionally there will be an intermediate save of the page content, if you have created a homepage ( is visible).

After editing pages, please leave the edit form by "Save Changes" since otherwise your edits will be lost!

For details see HelpOnEditing.

Tips on the Editor

"Check spelling" examines the text for unknown words.

Within the editor, the usual hotkeys work:

If you discover an interesting format somewhere, just use the "raw" icon to find out how it was done.

In UserPreferences, you can set up the editor to open when you double click a page.

You can subscribe to pages to get a mail on every change of that page. Just click on the envelope at top right of the page.

Text Markup and Links

To add special formatting to text, just enclose it within markup. There are special notations which are automatically recognized as internal or external links or as embedded pictures.

For details see HelpOnFormatting, HelpOnLinking and HelpOnSmileys.

Headlines and Paragraphs

Headlines are placed on a line of their own and surrounded by one to five equal signs denoting the level of the headline. The headline is in between the equal signs, separated by a space. Example:
== Second Level ==

• A common error is to insert an additional blank after the ending equal signs!

Paragraphs are lines separated by empty lines or other block structures. This means those lines which directly follow each other belong to one paragraph.

Preformatted text (e.g. a copy of an email) should be placed inside three curly braces {{{ ... }}}:

First Line
...
Last Line

For better visual separation, horizontal lines can be generated by using four dashes.

For details see HelpOnHeadlines and HelpOnRules.

Lists

item list

• first level

  • second Level

  • second item

    • indented text without bullet

• first level again

enumerated list

1. first item

2. second item (automatically enumerated)

Glossary

Term

Explanation

For details see HelpOnLists.

Tables

Tables appear if you separate the content of the columns by  ||. All fields of the same row must be also on the same line in the editor.

Markup:

• ||<rowbgcolor="#FFFFE0"> '''Column 1'''  |||| '''Column 2 & 3''' ||
  ||<)> 1  ||<:> 2 ||<(> 3 ||
  

Display:

• Column 1	Column 2 & 3
  1	2	3

For details see HelpOnTables.

Macros

• Macros allow dynamic (computed) content to be inserted into pages.

• A macro is called by "[[MacroName(parameters)]]".

• The parameters are optional, depending on the macro.

• The most important macros:

  • TableOfContents - show a local table of contents

  • Anchor - defines a link target line

  • FootNote - generates a footnote¹

  • PageList - generates lists of pages with titles matching a pattern

For details see HelpOnMacros.

Actions

Actions operate either on a single page or on the whole Wiki.

• AttachFile: Attach files to a page (HelpOnActions/AttachFile)

• DeletePage: Delete a page (after a security question)

• LikePages: Lists pages with similar title

• LocalSiteMap: List of all pages that are referred to, up to a maximum of 4 levels

• SpellCheck: Call check spelling for the current page (HelpOnSpellCheck)

For details see HelpOnActions.

Wikiquette - how do I behave correctly?

Cooperative Editing

Basic principle: Anybody logged in can edit anything.

Exceptions:

• If you want to edit a page without being disturbed, just write a note to that effect at the top of the page and save that change first.

• If two people edit a page simultaneously, the first can save normally, but the second will get a warning and should follow the directions to merge their changes with the already saved data.

• Personal Homepages: normally only changed by their owner, but you may append messages at the end of the page

In general, do follow any hints given on a page, there is generally no enforced limit, but you should not blindly ignore other people's wishes.

Organisation and Structure

• Naming

  • don't create arbitrary wikinames (OracleDatabase, not OraCle)

  • common prefixes (topical correlation)

  • common postfixes (same page type, e.g. ...Index)

• Index pages

• Categories (see CategoryCategory)

• Templates

• /SubPages (allow shorter links, automatic correlation: HelpOnEditing/SubPages)

• Follow the guidance of the Wiki used about how to name pages etc.

Exercises

For the exercises we use your own Wiki-homepage which is usually based on a WikiName FirstnameLastname:

• Configure your UserPreferences.

• create and change your homepage (normally FirstnameLastname)

• view the changes in the RecentChanges.

• try the icons

• unrestrained clicking

• ask, ask, ask.