Wiki Way's topics - tribe.net

oh, knol! here comes Google...

2007-12-15T19:21:01Z

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071214-google-to-wikipedia-knol-thine-enemy.html

Google to Wikipedia: "Knol" thine enemy

By Nate Anderson | Published: December 14, 2007 - 12:06PM CT

Google has surely noticed that much of its search traffic is directed to Wikipedia, which regularly has an entry in the top five search results for any particular term. If Google could steer all that traffic toward its own properties instead, and if those properties contained Google ads, and if Google split its revenue with the article creators... well, it's not hard to see why this would start to look pretty good to both Google and content creators, and why such an initiative could ramp up quickly.

Udi Manber, Google's VP of Engineering, announced just such a plan last night, a program that (in his words) will make it easier for those with knowledge to share it with the world. The system is called "Knol"—which refers to a "knowledge unit"—and it will let anyone create, edit, and profit from creating a page packed with information on a specific topic. In other words, Google doesn't just want to link Wikipedia, it wants to be Wikipedia.

For a company that got its start by bowing at the Altar of the Algorithm, bringing human-created content in-house is the most recent manifestation of a paradigm shift that has been in the works for the last few years now, one that hasn't been happening without controversy. With the announcement of Knol, Google is already inviting questions about whether its reach has now extended too far.
Land of the knols

The basic point behind the knol system is to highlight (and provide incentives for) authors—a direct shot at the anonymity of Wikipedia and other Web 2.0 systems that don't allow experts to stress their own credentials when posting.

Each knol (it's the name of both the pages and the service) is just a web page hosted by Google. It has a special layout, one generated by Google-supplied tools, that includes content, links, and an author biography.

<A sample knol page>

Each knol is controlled by the author who creates it. While strong community tools for suggesting changes, making comments, and ranking knols will exist, it's up to each knol's author to control the contents of the page.

Google will host the content but will not attempt to edit or verify it, instead trusting that the best knols will naturally rise to the top (a single topic can have multiple knols, each competing for higher placement in Google's search results.)

Essentially, Google is offering to let people rebuild Wikipedia, and it seems to be targeting two classes of users: 1) experts who may not all feel welcome in Wikipedia, where their actions carry no special weight, and 2) those who aren't keen on spending their free time contributing to Wikipedia without compensation. While Wikipedia itself is diverse enough to survive, smaller projects like Citizendium could find the going much tougher.

You say you want a revolution? Well...

The Knol project is, in one sense, as nonrevolutionary as they come. Making information pages simple to develop? Ranking those pages? Monetizing those pages? Google itself does all three things already on the web through tools like Blogger, Google Search, and AdSense. Essentially, Google is just rolling out a new set of web page creation tools with a single template to work on.

Google's professed interest in making it easy for people to put information on this thing called "the Internet" might have rung true in 1998, but that simply can't be the reason for Knol in 2007. It's already too easy. Wikipedia makes it simple. So do blogging tools.

Instead, Google wants to mount a direct challenge to various social knowledge sites. Although it won't have an exclusive license to the content created for Knol, and though it will offer Knol pages to be indexed by all search engines, it's clear that Google really wants to be in control of a vast, Wikipedia/Citizendium knowledge store. And it can offer something that Wikipedia, et al., cannot: cash.
AdSense and its discontents

The revenue sharing bit is one of the keys to the whole project. Google is going to let authors choose if they want to include Google ads on their knols. The truly altruistic might say no. Most people will say yes.

And that's where things could get ugly. The lure of filthy lucre is likely to force several changes on the community model of current social knowledge projects. For one, it will break the community-oriented, we're-all-working-on-this-together spirit of sites like Wikipedia. With Knol, we're not in this together; we're in competition. Writing a knol on a popular topic could become a cash cow, as Google promises to split ad revenue with the author.

Many different authors can take a shot at creating a knol on the same topic, which should allow the best pages to claw their way to the top in a sort of survival of the fittest. But the thing about intellectual Darwinism is that it can be vicious, and we expect the same to be true of competition for the top knol spots.

Will Google be the one to police the inevitable claims of plagiarism? Will it do anything when a knol rips off pictures from another knol? What happens when Wikipedia gets ripped off or rewritten? Google is famously loathe to intervene manually, but when the company is creating an ecosystem that rewards individuals and puts so much cash on the table, problems are sure to result.
Maybe Google can be evil

The blogosphere reaction has already been electric. Even those likely to give Google the benefit of the doubt when it comes to not being evil are having second thoughts. What possible reason does the company have for moving beyond indexing and into the hosting and control of this sort of content?

Actually, Google has been making these moves for years. Google Book Search, Google Video, and YouTube are only the highest-profile examples of the way that Google has moved far beyond its roots in pointing people to other places on the 'Net.

Social knowledge, as exemplified by the high search placement of Wikipedia articles and the growth of sites like Mahalo, has been high-profile for long enough to earn a spot on the Google strategic radar screen. Despite the idealistic sentiments about ease of knowledge production, Knol looks more like an attempt to kneecap various sites that now command a good chunk of Google's outgoing search result links.

With Google having a vested interest in knols, but also being the main search engine that will index and rank those links, many people already suspect a conflict of interest. While we suspect Google will be careful not to give a special boost to knol results (at the risk of ruining user confidence in its results), others aren't so sure. At the very least, it will create suspicion.

Om Malik argues that this is just "Google using its page rank system to its own benefit. Think of it this way: Google's mysterious Page Rank system is what Internet Explorer was to Microsoft in the late 1990s: a way to control the destiny of others."

TechCrunch wonders if this is "a step too far." Knol "brings the power of Google into a marketplace that is already rich with competition," writes Duncan Riley, "and a marketplace where Google can use its might to crush that competition by favoring pages from Knol over others, on what is the world's most popular search engine."

And Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land says, "It begins to feel like the knowledge aggregators are going to push out anyone publishing knowledge outside such aggregation systems."

This can't be the reaction that Google was hoping for with its announcement, but it may not matter. The naysayers can do their naysaying, but we suspect that the prospect of cash, combined with the competition for top spots in the Knol hierarchy, will lead to plenty of quality content at a rapid clip. Whether that's a positive development for the web is another question.

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

Uses, (ab)uses, and variationis

2007-12-15T16:27:24Z

How is a wiki to be used, what for, and why? Are there perversion of the concept (other than absurd commercializations like google-ranking gamers, etc).

I'm using a wiki-engine (http://www.pmwiki.com) for an (experimental?) writing project, plus notes: http://www.xradiograph.com/wrottings - most of the weirdness is in http://www.xradiograph.com/wrottings/XraysMonaLisa/XraysMonaLisa, where I use the wiki-structure for easier editing and non-linear navigation of the text.

I started this up in April 2007, surprised that it hadn't hit me earlier [the basic abstract "style" started more than 15 years ago]. I wonder what else is going on out there, different ways of generating, presenting, etc.

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

Using the wiki at work - Looking to share knowledge with anyone on this

2007-08-22T02:10:24Z

Today I suggested to one of my bosses that we maybe test out a wiki on the huge project that is the management and coordination of a local educational event we put together for the students and teachers of statewide schools in Wyoming each year. I referenced the following article.

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167600331

I suggested it could work well for our small nonprofit’s needs since we would not always have to wait for every person to be present to meet or get info (provided each person was responsible and timely about keeping their portion of the wiki updated). We could easily reference the project’s progress on the site anytime we wanted and stay abreast of all of its areas. In addition, we wouldn’t be inundated with emails clogging our inboxes that we had to constantly slog through to find what we needed. I think it would be very effective. Have any of you had any successes or rather problems, or any experiences at all integrating this into your company? I’d be curious to mutually share in this knowledge as much as possible.

As with any technology, I’m sure it’s only as good as the people who use it (or choose to misuse it).

posted in Wiki Way - 2 replies

WikiPatterns

2007-08-15T20:18:14Z

http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

say g'bye to wikipedia: it's jumped the shark

2007-05-07T21:28:06Z

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008953.html
re: http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2007/05/sand_castles_of_knowledge.html

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

Creole

2007-04-10T16:48:37Z

hey, things are pretty quiet around here!

http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Home

"Creole is a common wiki markup language to be used across different wikis. It's not replacing existing markup but instead enabling wiki users to transfer content seamlessly across wikis, and for novice users to contribute more easily."

posted in Wiki Way - 2 replies

MediaWiki hosts

2006-10-31T16:59:08Z

I have fallen in love with the interface of MediaWiki. See:

http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki

I don't have my own server yet. Would anyone know of hosts [preferably free or cheap] that run this or similar software?

S

posted in Wiki Way - 5 replies

September 2006 Board Election

2006-08-28T18:50:41Z

Hey all-

I just declared my candidacy for the Board. I would appreciate your support.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006#Evrik

Thanks!

bga

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

Template:Wikipedia

2006-02-28T15:40:07Z

Has any one set up Templates inside their Wikipedia?
I like the "Wikipedia:Today's featured article" Template on the main Wikipedia page.
How'd they do it?

1st create a normal page, but name it something like
Template:Something
To test the process edit some text like "this is text from something"
save that edit

Now create or edit another page and add the call
{{Template:Something}}
or
{{Something}}

Now when the page is viewed the "this is text from something" appears

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

wiki with downloadable, static pages

2006-02-01T09:22:19Z

Hi,
I came across a wiki once with a button in the corner that said, "download this wiki" and it would generate static html for the entire wiki that could be used to make local copies. It wasn't wikipedia. Anyone know of a wiki engine that has this feature? Also, is there a wiki-discussion email list or other forum where I might ask this question?

posted in Wiki Way - 2 replies

Edit War

2006-01-20T23:27:33Z

What to do when a wiki bully refuses to stop edit warring with you?

posted in Wiki Way - 4 replies

WikiLaw

2005-12-10T18:37:24Z

Help write the laws:
http://wiki-law.org/mwiki/index.php?title=Democracy_2.0:_Main_Page

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

We want a wiki!

2005-12-04T03:15:04Z

I think it's time to start a campaign.

Discussion forums for the tribes here on Tribe are OK. Now there are blogs for individual members. But wouldn't it be good if each tribe had its own wiki, too?

Respond here if you think this is a good idea. And let's see if Tribe take notice.

posted in Wiki Way - 11 replies

need help with MediaWiki customization

2005-11-05T01:18:43Z

I need help trying to figure out how to become a beaurocrat so that I can make myself a sysop so that I can modify the nav bar in my own install of MediaWiki 1.5. I have checked around the MediaWiki and MetaWiki wikis but most of the infomration I am finding is about how to do this in the Wikimieda project sites like Wikicites. Here is what I can find that touches on an answer but does not fully answer question.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Setting_user_rights_in_MediaWiki
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:User_rights

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help_talk:User_rights

I can edit the LocalSettings.php file, but only when instructed to change something in particular. I do not really know what is going on in the code, nor do I know PHP.

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

wikiphilia: the new illness ???

2005-11-02T21:41:53Z

http://www.hacknot.info/hacknot/action/showEntry?eid=71

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

does anyone know how to customize the left-side nav?

2005-11-02T08:52:16Z

Hii - I'm new to using wiki and this is my wiki site. I am building it to support the customer service and tech support basics of a small software company.

<http://www.digitalanarchy.com/wikimedia/index.php?title=Main_Page>

I want to change the default wiki flower logo to a company logo. I also want to customize the text links so I can link to product secitons, rather than leading to 'Community portal' and 'Current events', which we don't use. I have found some explanation to do this but honestly it's a little confusing to me. Am curious if anyone has a simple explanation or at least if anyone on this list has done this kind of customization.

thanks! *debbie

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

Army of Geeks to bring the meaning of everything to everyone by 2015

2005-09-20T21:30:35Z

via Digg.com

http://www.smh.com.au/news/next/life-the-universe-and-wiki/2005/09/19/1126981972225.html

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

Tiddly wiki

2005-06-02T20:11:48Z

http://tiddlywiki.com/ - standalone (somewhat) wiki that's uses the browser -- ie, save the webpage locally, and the java-script updates itself. no database, no directory of files, etc.

The GettingThignsDone adaption http://shared.snapgrid.com/gtd_tiddlywiki.html has brought this to my attention.

Haven't played around with it yet. Interesting. But the zooming-flashy stuff irritates me. But I suppose you could customize that....

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

SdiDesk ...

2005-05-24T16:18:39Z

I have the first draft of a wiki-like personal editor I've written for Windows. It's basically very close to UseMod with some preliminary diagramming. There's no web-server so it's strictly a personal tool at the moment.

You can download it here : http://www.nooranch.com/sdidesk/wiki/wiki.cgi/HomePage

But be warned, it's a very rough first stab.

I know it works in Windows 98, and after a couple of problems, I've heard this it works on Windows XP, though I haven't been able to verify this myself. All feedback greatfully received.

posted in Wiki Way - 9 replies

wiki affordances

2005-02-21T15:09:31Z

Hi,

Some intereting notes on what kind of communication is faciliated by wiki and ideas how to overcome the problems.

http://skyloom.com/bin/view/Lynnwood/WikiFacilitation and http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev.WikiFacilitation

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

Compiled version of a Wiki system?

2005-02-04T20:33:56Z

It may not be accurate, but I have been told that I am not allowed to run open souce software at work.

I'm guessing this means specifically *uncompiled* open source software, where I could see the actual code.

Thing is, I'd really love to use a wiki system to keep my notes organized, and maybe share them with a small handful of people who can add to them.

Can anyone point me to a *compiled* version of a wiki system that I could possibly use on a Windows system?

many thanks,

posted in Wiki Way - 3 replies

Instiki

2005-01-07T01:06:49Z

I wanted to install a wiki on the local network at work. On an NT machine.

I know *nothing* about NT or administrating web-servers on it etc. I don't have a IIS or a web-server on my desktop machine.

So I looked at Instiki (http://www.instiki.org/show/HomePage) and it does exactly what it says on the tin : there is no step 3. Installing both Ruby and Instiki was insanely easy. And it worked straight off. (It includes it's own web-server, so need to worry about that)

It's a basic wiki, and I wish it used UseMod style mark-up .. but on the whole, I'm pretty damned impressed.

posted in Wiki Way - 4 replies

Year of the Enterprise Wiki

2005-01-06T23:59:26Z

Yep, it's official. It's the year of the enterprise wiki : http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/12/30/01FEtoycollab_1.html

If you joined this tribe last year, aren't you all glad you were ahead of the curve? ;-)

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

Need help

2005-01-06T13:56:11Z

Posted in reply to another post and thought it shoudl be an independent post, too:

I have come to Wikis very recently (mostly via Wikipedia and now wikicities--http://genealogy.wikicities.com) but now want to do a project using a stand alone wiki on a Windows (2000) machine.

Just started looking to find a good easy solution that doesn't need to much IT support.

Noticed this post here and thought I would ask. My needs are:

* Stand alone wiki as far as possible
* Categorisation of entries
* If possible, we should be able to control access and maybe make different, controlled views available over the web...

Basicallly, we want to do an encyclopedia/resource directory type project; kinda like the disinfopedia or the dkosopedia -- though MediaWiki seems like a lot of back-end work if you don't have a web server with MySQL, etc. to run it on.

And I just went to instki.org and noticed that it even has something like an "Export to HTML" feature.

I guess I am thrashing around. Do you have any recommendations?

Thanks for any and all help.

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

WikiMinion beating back wiki-spam

2004-11-29T16:35:04Z

There's a war going on in wiki-land between wiki-spammers and wiki owners.

Recently the totally cool RichardP has come up with a bot named "Wiki Minion" to hunt down and rollback spam on UseMod wikis.

Follow the story and maybe the source-code release here :

http://www.nooranch.com/synaesmedia/wiki/wiki.cgi?WikiMinion

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

Firefox Extension for Wikipedia

2004-11-29T14:51:55Z

from Joi Ito: http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/11/04/firefox_extension_for_editing_wikipedia.html

I've had this hanging around for nearly a month....

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

The gender profile of Wikipedia

2004-10-15T22:14:01Z

Joi Ito's blog:

http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/10/11/the_gender_profile_of_wikipedia.html

've been hanging out a bit with part of the Wikipedia community since meeting Jimmy Wales in Linz. One thing that has struck me is that many, if not most, of the people I've met from the community who are involved in managing Wikipedia seem to be women. I haven't conducted any scientific analysis or anything, but Wikipedia seems much more gender balanced than the blogging community. I know many people point out that ratio of men at conferences on blogging and ratio of men who have loud blog voices seems to be quite high. I wonder what causes this difference in gender distribution? Is it that the power law aspect of blogs is inherently more competitive and appeals to the way men are "trained" in society? Or is it that we're just talking to the "head" of the blog curve and that the more interesting blogs are actually by women in "the long tail"? Or is it something about Wikipedia that attracts powerful women? Has anyone else noticed this or done a study on gender distribution on wikis? I wonder if this true of wikis generally? I don't think Wikipedia is a "traditional" anything let alone a traditional wiki. Has anyone noticed this on other wikis?

posted in Wiki Way - 2 replies

TikiWiki

2004-09-06T18:46:54Z

This CMS-Groupware appeals to me. Anyone using it, involved, or otherwise can offer info or insight re how it is to work with? Ease, time, etc? Or heck, anything at all related, rumored...

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

the "failure" of wikis in classrooms. ?.

2004-08-24T09:20:25Z

http://kairosnews.org/node/view/3794

My Brilliant Failure: Wikis In Classrooms

(an interesting section, below)

[....]
An experienced wiki developer told me that people come to him from "academia" and wanted to know questions such as: "how can I use this in my classroom". What they don’t realize is that there is a great potential in this tool to be completely disruptive (in a good way) to the classroom setting. At this point, I made a connection to an article by Scardamalia and Bereiter about ‘Computer Support for Knowledge Building Communities’ which called for no less than restructuring our concept of ‘schools’ to allow for student to student interaction, negotiating meaning, and knowledge construction.

I used an instructionist and fill-in-the-blanks approach, whereas, what I would have rather have done is for the student to identify the blanks themselves, and build from there. In other words, it's as if I had installed a blog, but only for myself to publish to the class, and allowed them to only make comments. To really use blog to it's fullest potential, the participants need to be writing their own posts and making comments on each other's pages. To really use a wiki, the participants need to be in control of the content- you have to give it over fully.

[...]

In fact, the tool did not matter whatsoever. I didn’t even need PowerPoint. I just used the tool for the fun of it. It wasn’t harmful, I hope, but I suppose I was disappointed. I wanted to see something magical happen, and it didn’t. Why something that seems so obvious to me now could not have been seen before is just mind-boggling. In a way, I see this experiment as a brilliant failure.

It seems clear to me now that you cannot just change the tool- you need to look at your practice as well. Being so open, a wiki does not have any inherent properties that will instantly make a knowledge-building community. It depends not only on the software configuration-- for example whether certain areas are locked or whether you make templates for layout—but also on the social norms and practices around the wiki. In a classroom setting, this means the practice of the teacher, and the interactions of the students.

[....]

posted in Wiki Way - 2 replies

startups interested?

2004-08-22T20:41:46Z

http://battellemedia.com/archives/000760.php

'A reader (thanks!) sent me this link to a Journal article (sub required) - written by Kara Swisher - good to see Kara covering this space again - about Wikis. I've been using Wikis for the past 9 months or so on a couple different projects and I certainly see the potential, but far as I can tell, they are not quite there yet. However, there are some developments in the works, one of which will be demonstrated at Web 2.0, that are very exciting (Joe Kraus will be there with his new company Jot). From the piece:

Now, venture capitalists are funding several startups that are attempting to take the idea to a bigger and more lucrative general-business audience. Their goal is to try to solve one of the workplace's most vexing problems: how to have employees collaborate and communicate better electronically....
....Getting average people to think about controlling the Web as comfortably as they might an e-mail or a Word document has not been easy. But the rise in popularity of Web logs known as blogs and other "social software" is changing that. Blogging, say wiki proponents, has revived the idea that a Web site can be an ever-changing organism that can be linked with other Web sites to create a larger and more informative picture....
....Jot's Joe Kraus says that to make wikis more widespread, companies like his and Mr. Mayfield's must make wiki software simple to integrate into existing applications that workers commonly use, add more features beyond document editing and make it even more enticing for people to deploy them. "People have to perceive that they only need to add a little information in order to get a lot out of it," says Mr. Kraus.'

posted in Wiki Way - 3 replies

blog-integrated wiki

2004-07-28T18:24:11Z

ewiki ("ErfurtWiki") has been modified for easy-integration into (php-based) WordPress blogs: http://wordpress.org/support/10/8596

I installed the plug-in, but haven't played around with it much. Not sure if I need it....

The developer suggests it as an easy method to develop "static pages" adjunct to the blog (as opposed to posts).

posted in Wiki Way - 3 replies

Switch

2004-07-27T16:03:32Z

Joi Ito is switching (maybe?) wiki software: http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/07/27/wikiswitch.html

"I've been using MoinMoin, a python based wiki because I thought I'd be able to hack it since I was learning python. It turns out that I haven't had any time to hack MoinMoin and frankly, it looks too difficult for me. The SocialText (I'm an investor and on the board) wiki software has become quite stable with some cool features so I've decided to switch my main wiki from Moin Moin to SocialText. The question I have is whether I should migrate pages from my old wiki and whether I should continue running the old wiki. If I am going to migrate the pages, another question is how to move the pages... Anyone have any thoughts?"

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

New to the Wiki Way

2004-07-19T21:45:27Z

i recently got involved as an contributor for wikipedia, and it dawned on me that wiki would be the perfect vehicle for an old database idea that ive set on the back burner for several years now. could anybody refer me to some good resources for the wiki beginner?

posted in Wiki Way - 3 replies

Need some feedback....

2004-07-19T17:51:17Z

can anyone critique this idea? I don't have a landline, but I want to be accessible to friends, family, old girlfriends. So that thought birthed this idea...

www.wyty.com

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

Wikis change publishing. As I do my part in changing the world, I want to use Wiki-collective publishing to help the process!!! Looking for advice/interest.

2004-07-17T17:55:07Z

What is the best wiki-way to publish (that I can do myself as one who is a non-software-programmer, although I have and could program, I just haven't practiced it since Caltech and UC Santa Barbara)?

I've written an essay (that is receiving strong interest in some quarters) on the topic of practicing business in a progressive way (somewhere between "maximal-profit" Microsoft and "give-it-away" Open Source). (http://aikidoactivism.tribe.net/ is a tribe devoted to the topic, but there is not much discussion there. The essay can be seen as the first link for "Aikido Activism" at http://home.earthlink.net/~reedburk/reedburkhartcentral/id1.html ).

I want to publish an expanded framework -- based on the thesis of the essay -- to expand the articulations in topical subsectors. I call the general theme Aikido Activism (or the Aikido Revolution), and the base essay discusses the general level already. The next step is to democratically publish (VIA WIKI I THINK IS BEST, RIGHT?) the topical tree structure of what will become an expanded work (eventually an ebook or hardcover) enabling people to contribute thoughts and information in a most democratic fashion.

Since the Aikido Revolution is all about individual empowerment and living the change we are looking for, the idea is to involve as wide a possible collection of people today to share their own knowledge of current practitioners (in general there are many current practitioners, but the general movement has not yet been celebrated as such, which is both the great need and great opportunity), and also to share their own knowledge of current thought leaders' thoughts relative to Aikido Activism.

What is the best way to do this, and is anyone interested in helping out?

Noted author/thinker Douglas Rushkoff -- www.rushkoff.com -- has written, "it [Aikido Activism] is the obvious next step, and much more efficient than bloody revolution," and Douglas has offered to help with an anthology-style (collection of manifestos or essays) book. It is my idea to develop the book itself collaboratively -- myself acting as conductor of those who would share their own thoughts, interests, and stories (their virtuosity) in an online development of the story of Aikido Activism: where we are (including celebrating business luminaries) in the context of the future view of Aikido Activism, and where we must go (to spur the needed/coming revolution).

I am a scientist/engineer by training, but think it best to collaborate on this with someone who is already expert in WIKIs and in whatever other web-publishing tools that are inexpensive and readily implemented.

Comments? Interest? The key idea is that this is an activity for us all -- needed by us all, and benefiting us all.

posted in Wiki Way - 2 replies

CC wiki

2004-07-12T15:04:19Z

Creative Commons is developing a wiki to track ""some rights reserved" resources: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Main_Page

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

TikiWiki

2004-06-29T01:46:47Z

This CMS-Groupware appeals to me. Anyone using it, involved, or otherwise can offer info or insight re how it is to work with? Ease, time, etc? Or heck, anything at all related, rumored...

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

the Chinese Canary is dead

2004-06-16T13:06:58Z

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000824.html

"On June 8, I posted an article about the Chinese-language version of Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia. I finished the article by suggesting that its continued availability in mainland China could be due to the Beijing government not yet being aware of it, and that "The Chinese Wikipedia could well be a 'canary in the coal mine' for Chinese online freedom." Little did I know that the canary was already dead.

According to IT World.com, Chinese censors shut down all access to the Chinese language version of Wikipedia on June 3, and cut access to all forms of Wikipedia (regardless of language) yesterday. A Chinese contributor to Wikipedia quoted in the article says that it was probably the combination of the Tiananmen Square anniversary on June 4 and the uptick in press attention to zh.wikipedia.com that led the censors to crack down.

This isn't entirely surprising. The first comment about our Chinese Wikipedia article came from WorldChanging ally David Bowers, who lives in China, indicating that he couldn't access Wikipedia, and speculating that access had already been cut. Looks like you were right, David. Do let us know, if you can, if the censors get around to cutting WorldChanging access, too..."

Live links in the original post.

posted in Wiki Way - 0 replies

Development/Documenting Wikis

2004-06-14T23:56:50Z

http://www.wordpress.org , the open-source blogging tool, started up a wiki for building documentation: http://wiki.wordpress.org

It's a php-wiki and the interface is annoying & the search-function bugs the heck out of me (it defaults to searching for your string as if its a pagename; you have to click another button in the results to do a text-search). But the docs are developing...

Are there other projects that are using wikis to collaboratively document themselves?

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

PmWiki

2004-06-14T16:47:57Z

I started up a preliminary PmWiki (http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PmWiki ) at work last week. Only a couple of days old, and coworkers are already interested.... Intranet only.

I think I hearm of PmWiki from Brenadan, here....

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

which wiki?

2004-05-28T02:17:55Z

so, which wiki's have people found to be the most/least usable. i've only played with a couple, and i ended up settling on pmwiki pretty quickly ( http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/PmWiki/PmWiki ) because it was easy for an amateur like myself to set up. i'd like to look at some more just to see what's out there and compare features etc. can anybody recommend other wiki software that is pretty easy to set up?

posted in Wiki Way - 28 replies

My almost virgin (PHP) Wiki

2004-05-02T18:31:08Z

http://www.eronj.com/wiki/

I set this up a few months ago, and have done NOTHING with it.
Are any of you folks using/running your own Wiki?
anybody using PHP Wiki? It was one that was fairly easy
for my ISP to set up (I had wanted to go with
Twiki or Kwiki, but each had problems with the version of
Apache or Perl, I forget which).

Anyway, PHPWiki is a reasonable beast.

My REAL interest is setting up a simple knowlegde base at my work, (on a wiki behind our firewall, obviously)
-ron jeffries
rjeffries@occamnetworks.com

posted in Wiki Way - 11 replies

Wiki Monitoring?

2004-04-05T11:14:27Z

do you find it's hard to keep track of wiki conversations you have? short of bookmarking every single page i've ever posted to on a wiki (which, for me, is very few right now, maybe 4 or 5 pages over 3 wikis)... i don't know the best way. it would be nice to be able to subscribe to pages and manage that from one place.

can you think of any tool that could help manage this?

posted in Wiki Way - 2 replies

Wikis as Collaborative Learning Tools

2004-03-23T19:50:31Z

I'm new to to this tribe, and new to tribe in general. I don't know if this is the right arena for my query as you guys seem to be more experienced with wikis. I'm just starting:

I'm finishing the first year of an MSc IT in Education and my second year involves a research project with an artefact. To finish this year, however, we have to do a Meta assignemnet, which is, in essence, a mini second year project (including an artefact).

I love the idea of wikis and what they can do in the field of education but I don't have a lot of experience with them. I'd like to create one, or instigate the creation of one, for my Meta and I'm not sure what type is best. The time frame is quite small so should I go with a wikifarm type one (with a view to going more advanced in my second year project) or try out some of the more advanced software first off?

This may be too early to post this as I'm not even fully sure yet of who the collaborators will be, but if anyone has any initial advice, I'll keep updating as the project develops. I have to present my proposal on Friday week, the 2nd April, so should have some idea by then. I hope.

Ta,
Sinéad

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

How to leverage Wiki for a consumer site with many users?

2004-03-20T07:21:11Z

Hi all,

I'm new to this Tribe. I posted a note in the Social Software Intellectuals Tribe about Wikis, after which someone went into strange rap that uses the word wiki over and over. I don't think he quite understood my question, so I decided to move this thread over here. So here's my post again.

I'm interested to meet people who have successfully used a Wiki for a large audience. A small community can self-police, but once you open something like a Wiki to everyone it's very easy for all hell to break loose. How could Wiki technology be used to let a local community create an entertainment guide, and what sort of checks and balances can be put in place to keep someone from libeling a business?

posted in Wiki Way - 1 reply

The List

2004-02-24T00:01:40Z

Jaffa asked about this on the which wiki thread and I thought it worthy of a fresh post because tribe.net threading sux0rs.

The definitive list of all wikis!

--> http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines <--

posted in Wiki Way - 2 replies

Is there a wiki...

2004-02-17T22:49:47Z

There's a Wikipedia and at least one travel wiki. But... Is there a legal wiki? I'm envisioning something like a wiki that catalogs all of the laws (by linking and/or copying from the publically-available, but hard to navigate) government sites and provides some kind of human-readable explanation.

If there isn't one, would anyone like to help me start one?

Cheers,

Anca.

posted in Wiki Way - 16 replies

photo album

2004-02-12T08:27:40Z

what kind of picture is appropriate for a tribe about wikis?

to bad wikis don't have an animal like the linux penguin or the gnu... gnu.

maybe we should start a popular movement to pick an "official" wiki animal and propagate it across the WikiWikiWeb.

(i need to get off of tribes. this is ridiculous.)

posted in Wiki Way - 7 replies

Personal Wiki?

2004-02-09T02:47:34Z

I run a personal wiki (http://www.nooranch.com/synaesmedia/wiki/wiki.cgi?HomePage) , which means, that although it's free for anyone to edit, it's mainly written by me.

For this reason there are some ways it diverges from the normal wiki ideal.

* I keep a personal voice, I use the first person a lot. I talk about my own background.

* I encourage other people to sign their contributions, and I prefer to keep pages in a dialogue form rather than re-editing them into impersonal essay form.

* Many of the page names are ideosyncratic. I use a phrase I like the sound of to represent an idea rather than the name that would necessarily be best understood.

Now of course, the main audience of my wiki, is myself. In the sense that I know how to find things. Yet I enjoy being surprised when I find contributions from others. Or when I find short routes between ideas I hadn't realized were so closely connected.

But in sense this is less wiki than "personal hypertext". Some of the social aspects of wiki don't apply. (Particularly worrying is the possibility that I could suffer a hostile attack and the readership would be unlikely to help fix it.)

On the other hand, this is definitely NOT a wiki-weblog, or bliki or other combination of the two. My weblog interacts with the wiki (which I also use to get user comments on the weblog.) but I don't use the wiki as the weblog. (The styles of writing in the two are different, the content is a bit different.) Sometimes I post the same piece to both, but often I don't.

What does everyone else think of personal wikis? Just a bad subsitute for weblogs? Just bad (ie. unpopular wikis)? Or yet another subtly different genre?

See also : http://www.nooranch.com/synaesmedia/wiki/wiki.cgi?PersonalWiki

posted in Wiki Way - 2 replies