Welcome to the AboutWikis page:

What is a Wiki?

From Wiki.org : A Wiki is "The simplest online database that could possibly work."

"Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.

Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users."

On Wikis:

Educators wishing to utilize a Wiki have a fundamental choice to make; (1) they can "squat" on an existing Wiki, or (2) they can install a Wiki engine on their local server (or ISP space, if allowed) and grow their own Wiki.

There are many available Wiki engines (sometimes spelled "Wikki"on the World Wide Web. This particular Wiki engine CALPER is using is a freeware Wiki engine called UniWakka (which is a fork of the WakkaWiki engine) that has been modified to support Unicode encoding. One of the more ubiquitous Wiki engines is the MediaWiki engine, which runs among Wikis the popular Wikipedia . Two others include TWiki  and WikkiTikkiTavi . You'll find many individual Wikis running off these Wiki engines on the Web.

Educators choosing to download, install and run their own Wiki engine have multiple choices to make considering (among other things) (1) cost, some Wiki engines are open source and free, others require some level of payment, (2) server requirements, some Wiki engines are based in PHP, others in Perl, others in Python, etc., some use MySQL to database their pages, others require PostgreSQL? or another database, and some write to a "flat file" (which isn't a database per se, but a text document), and (3) scalability, some Wiki engines support "Wiki farming" (the creation of multiple other Wikis from one installation), while others require the Wiki engine to be installed for each individual Wiki.

CALPER has chosen to use a Wiki engine that is strictly PHP/MySQL based, and supports Wiki farming.


What this page can help you with:



Why Login?

Anyone may view the Wiki pages, but creating a login allows you to freely contribute to the page content, as well as 'take ownership' of pages, and allows your changes to be documented and attributed to your chosen WikiName.

It's true that Wikis have the option to allow anyone, logged in or not, the ability to edit pages at any time, whether or not they have either created a UserName; or logged in as such. CALPER has experimented with this in its previous Wiki setup, however overwhelming hits by spam (DealingWithSpam) has factored into the decision to require contributors to login. Also, creating a UserName (or WikiName) (and subsequently logging in as such) has several advantages.



Creating New Wiki Pages

Does Language create Reality? In a Wiki, a page exists by virtue of being referenced! Wiki speak is auto-recognized by the Wiki as an attempt to reference another Wiki Page, typing in a word in Wiki Speak, such as: AboutWikis will create both a link to the page AboutWikis and the page itself!


Why WikiSpeak?

WikiSpeak is a singular expression created by joining two (or more) words, with each word-part capitalized. Words typed in WikiSpeak are "special expressions" that the Wiki will try to interpret. If a WikiPage happens to exist with the same name as the WikiWord you've entered, the word will automatically be linked to the corresponding WikiPage. If no page exists, the Wiki will "guess" that you wish to make a page with this name and will follow the word with a ? until a page with this name is created.


Who Owns This Page? (We all do! )

If no Users have taken ownership of the page you are viewing, the word Nobody will appear at the bottom of the page. When a User "takes ownership" of a page, that person has the ability to control the ACLs (Access Control Lists) for that page. ACLs determine who can read, write and comment on the page. Many Wikis use the default "everyone" for all ACLs (it is arguably what makes a Wiki a Wiki!). CALPER's Wiki has its default ACLs set to allow anyone to read page content, but only logged in users to write or comment on the Wiki. At times, owners may wish to restrict these features even further. (For example, a collaborative document may be read restricted to only the authors until a time when the authors choose to allow it to be viewed publically.)

Regarding ACL's: A single asterick (*) in the ACL field means anybody who visits the page can make changes. Placing individual user names, such as WakkaKeeper, in the ACL field means only those particular users (who will need to be logged in to be identified) can make changes. A plus sign (+) in the ACL field means that anyone who is "logged in" can make changes. This is the default setting for "write" and "comment" within this Wiki (for two reasons: (1) it prevents spam robots from erasing page content and replacing it with nonsense, and (2) it requires your users to login to make changes, and this is useful for tracking purposes.)

Owners can also relinquish control to other Users.


Creating New Wikis (Growing the Wiki Farm)

In addition to creating new Wiki pages, users can "farm" the Wiki to create what is in effect "sub-wikis". To find out more about this, please visit AboutFarming.


Formatting text:

While many common web applications support the use of embedded HTML tags (such as <B>, <I> or <A HREF="...">, Wakka uses a different approach to format text (this approach seems common among Wikkis). For example,






Creating Links:

Hyper-linking is done in two ways. The first is the 'dummy' link, and that is; URL's will auto-selflink. Simply type in (or copy) a URL and when you save the page the URL text will be linked to the URL. For example, simply typing in the URL http://www.wired.com  will create a link. The second way is to 'force' the link, by embedding the link and the text you wish linked inside double brackets, like so:

[[http://www.dietotenhosen.de Hosen's Homepage]]  this will display only the text 'Hosen's Homepage', linked to the URL provided, like so: Hosen's Homepage 

Creating Headers

Headers are created by embedding text in differing numbers of equal signs. Small headers are embedded in double equal signs (==Small Header==). Header sizes increase in increments up to the largest possible header, six equal signs (======Biggest Header======). These two examples are demonstrated below:




Adding Images

To add images to the Wiki pages, the images must be located on a web server somewhere. Note: Image Uploading to our server is in development. -Arlo Thus, to add an image, put a reference to that image's URL in the text as such:

{{image url="http://calper.la.psu.edu/images/neuschwanstein.jpg"}} (The path to the neuschwanstein.jpg file on the CALPER web server)


(The image itself)

Additional Wiki Resources

For articles, books, web links and other Wiki resources, please go to WikiResources.

A Final Note:

To turn the autoformatting of WikiSpeak off, and print text in a plain "WYSIWYG" manner, put that text inside double double-quotes. This will allow you to type WikiWords and formatting characters (**, //...) without auto-formatting or page creation. I did this throughout this page.


To "play" with a Wiki Page, go to our SandBox.