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
