Working with wikis

(these notes are still rough!)

A lot of interesting writing online happens on wikis. A wiki is a kind of hypertext with the additional property that anyone can edit the text using only a web browser. It's easy to create new pages and create links between pages. In this way, you can use a wiki to collaboratively "grow" a web site.

Notable wikis

Wikis are also used by many organizations internally for planning, brainstorming, writing documentation, etc.

Why wikis?

At this point in the class, we already know how to make a website. So why use a wiki? Some reasons:

How to use a wiki

I've set up a wiki for this class, as a demonstration. I'll give out the URL in class.

There are many kinds of wiki software, and all of them work slightly differently. Among the most common is MediaWiki, which is what I've elected to install for this demonstration.

Make your own wiki!

You're free to experiment with the in-class wiki, if you'd like---I'll leave it running up until the end of class. But you can also host your own wiki easily on other sites. I recommend: