[EnviroEngr]

Publication: Scientific Computing & Instrumentation
Date: Feb 1, 2005
Section: News Briefs Page: 12

Wiki Wiki
The ability to allow many people to contribute to its content makes it a valuable tool where a repository of information is required John Joyce, Ph.D.
Wiki wiki means quick or super-fast in Hawaiian. It is also the name given to a hypertext document collection or Web site that allows content to be added and/or edited by anybody. The first wiki was developed in Perl by

Ward Cunningham in 1995 for the Portland Pattern Repository. By tradition, only this site is referred to as Wiki or WikiWikiWeb in upper case. All other sites are therefore referred to as wikis in lower case. While the English colloquial pronunciation is generally ‘wicky’ or ‘weekee’, the correct Hawaiian pronunciation is closer to ‘veekee’.

Since the creation of the original Wiki software, there have been many implementations of wiki engines. In addition to the original Perl, you can currently find implementations in a wide variety of languages. These range from Awk through Bash, C++, Lisp, Java, PHP, Ruby, Tcl, to VisualBasic, as well as active server page implementations. While the features included in a particular implementation will vary, the number and variety of language implementations mean that, no matter the hardware or operating system you are using, you should be able to find a package allowing you to implement a functioning wiki. Some of these are commercial packages, but many are released under a variety of open source licenses.

While you can download and install this software on your own server, there are also a variety of both free and commercial wiki hosts available. These include ProjectForum, Leg Joints and Team-Notepad. There are currently around a thousand public wiki projects, which are listed at SwitchWiki. No one knows how many non-public implementations have been launched.

The ability of a wiki to allow many people to contribute to its content makes it a valuable tool for many purposes where a repository of information is required. Online activities have included the production of encyclopedias, dictionaries and books. They have even been successfully used to document software projects on RubyForge.

One of the most visible proponents of wikis has been the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Founded by Jimbo Wales in 2003, the objective of the foundation has been to nurture wikibased projects and to provide free public access to their contents. Active projects include Wiktionary, a multilingual dictionary; Wikibooks, a collection of royalty-free text books; and Wikiquote, a repository of famous quotes. However, their most wellknown project is undoubtedly Wikipedia, launched in 2001. It is one of the 500 most-visited Web sites and one of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world. These projects currently run on the
MediaWiki engine developed on SourceForge.

Wikipedia is a multi-language encyclopedia. The Wikipedia community has professed an intention to work with any interested parties to include as many of the World’s 6,500 languages as possible. The general reference to access a particular language in the encyclopedia is xx.wikipedia.org with the xx representing the ISO 639 two letter language code. For example, to access the English version of the Wikipedia, you would use the URL en.wikipedia.org. Alternate three-letter language codes are used for those languages not listed in the ISO 639 standard. The Wikipedia Web site lists 89 languages for which there has been at least some active development, ranging from Afrikaans to Yiddish with everything in between from Anglo-Saxon to Interlingua, Irish, Sanskrit, Welsh and Klingon! The system not only allows links between articles in the same language, but also allows interlinks between articles in different languages.

Participating in a wiki project, such as Wikipedia, is generally fairly straightforward. In most cases, once you have a wiki page displayed, you simply have to click on the Edit This Page

[EnviroEngr]

And at Post Carbon Institute, we have:
http://www.postcarbon.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

[admin]

Anyone want to run a wiki?

http://www.peakoil.com/wiki

[EnviroEngr]

I think we're looking for a Mr. Bytesmiths at this time.

[Bytesmiths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnviroEngr', 'I') think we're looking for a Mr. Bytesmiths at this time.

[EnviroEngr]

Admin, Agreeable? I'll see what kind support this effort needs and what it'll take to provide it.

[Bytesmiths]

I've grown bored of the flaming and re-hashing on the forums. How about getting the wiki REALLY going?

The only reason to delay might be to wait for 1.4, which is imminent. (Although 1.4rc1 is supposedly pretty good.) 1.4 adds table prefixes, which is pretty much required for any site that needs to share a database.

I did offer to admin it.

If anyone is going to admin it, it would be GREAT if it had diagrams. Can someone install Graphviz, please? It goes in /wiki/extensions. I have a version that is (IMHO) much nicer than the Graphviz installed on Wikipedia, in that it allows non-hierarchical layout engines, and text wrapping.

Info/tutorial on my version of Graphviz: http://www.IslandSeeds.org/wiki/Test:Graphviz

Download my version of Graphviz: http://www.Bytesmiths.com/InfoArk/Graphviz.php.gz

I've put a simple Graphviz diagram on the Peak Oil wiki: http://www.PeakOil.com/wiki/index.php/Graphviz , but it ain't gonna work until the extension gets installed. Whomever installs the extension can use that page as a test. The result should look like this:



Also, it would be nice to fix your apache httpd.conf (or included file) so that nicer URLs can be used -- it gets rid of the "index.html" in the middle of the URL. (Seed the IslandSeeds.org wiki URL above.)

Finally, it needs to have Thomas Gries ENotif extension, which causes watched pages to conditionally send the user email when they change. Without this extension, it's impossible to control vandalism and spamming.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif

BTW: what happened to Peakoil Jane? She looks like a Nick Nolte mug shot!

[EnviroEngr]

Has Admin been on the slopes again?

Sorry about that Bytesmiths. I'll try to get an answer for ya.

[Bytesmiths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bytesmiths', 'A')lso, it would be nice to fix your apache httpd.conf (or included file) so that nicer URLs can be used -- it gets rid of the "index.html" in the middle of the URL. (Seed the IslandSeeds.org wiki URL above.)

[EnviroEngr]

Bytesmiths,

The answer is: Let me know what you need to start with this project and I will get it to you.

For this:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')'ll be happy to do some Wiki stuff if someone with database access will add the SEEDS ecovillage to your InterWiki table. And my REAL motivation would be to have people contribute to the SEEDS Wiki.

[Bytesmiths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnviroEngr', ' ')If you cannot do this yourself as admin, PM Aaron and he can help you get it set up.

[EnviroEngr]

As always, let me know if you need assistance.

This is a worthy project and it should be of great use and benefit.

Thanks in advance for all your work.

[EnviroEngr]

I finally set up my account.

Is this still an issue? ---->

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ell, tried to send this off to my user page on SEEDS (http://www.IslandSeeds.org/wiki/User:Jan_Steinman), but you don't have an up-to-date InterWiki map installed.

[entropyfails]

Woot!

My dark hope has been fufilled. A peak oil wiki without me having to do the setup. Time to get down and start mining the good stuff from the forums and reformat it into a wiki.

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EntropyFails

[Bytesmiths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnviroEngr', 'I') finally set up my account.

Is this still an issue? ---->$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ell, tried to send this off to my user page on SEEDS (http://www.IslandSeeds.org/wiki/User:Jan_Steinman), but you don't have an up-to-date InterWiki map installed.

[EnviroEngr]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bytesmiths', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnviroEngr', 'I') finally set up my account.

Is this still an issue? ---->$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ell, tried to send this off to my user page on SEEDS (http://www.IslandSeeds.org/wiki/User:Jan_Steinman), but you don't have an up-to-date InterWiki map installed.

[Ayoob_Reloaded]

I'd like to contribute to the wiki effort too. I can't program at all, but I'd like to work on putting content in there.

[EnviroEngr]

Jan,

He's all yours.

I'll get to work on Admin1 and Admin2.

[Bytesmiths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob_Reloaded', 'I')'d like to contribute to the wiki effort too. I can't program at all, but I'd like to work on putting content in there.

[entropyfails]

Make
http://www.peakoil.com/wiki/index.php/S ... entchanges

part of your daily peakoil.com reading.

And please go there and add tons of content. I've set up a possible framework for the thing so far.

Make sure to check the "Discussion" tab along the top of each page. This will allow us to chat about how we want a page to develop.

I have suggested a more conservative tone for the theory and allow more of a speculative nature on the consequences side. I’ve included a spot for adding planning links.

Lets stop talking here about it and go to the wiki and start adding stuff. *grin*

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EntropyFails