What is a Wiki? #

a technology for collaborative creation of internet and intranet pages
Wiki-Wiki is hawaii and means fast

Principles #

Fast - fast editing, communicating and easy to learn
Open - everybody may read and edit everything
Uncomplicated - everything works in a standard browser
Easy - no HTML knowledge necessary, simply formatted text
Simple - Content over Form (content counts, not the super-pretty appearance)
Secure - every change is archived, nothing gets lost
Interlinked - Links between pages are easy to make
Flexible
- Personal Information Management, Knowledgebases, Brainstorming
- Collaboration, Coordination and Communication platform
- Creating documentation and slide shows
- etc...

The First Steps #

Help with problems or questions: HelpContents () and HelpMiscellaneous/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
UserPreferences
- Name (appears on RecentChanges)
- Email address for subscribing to page change emails and retrieving a lost login/password
- Personal preferences
- Link with User-ID ( in any case, put a bookmark on that)
Structure of pages
- Navigation: Quicklinks, Icons link to system actions (HelpOnNavigation)
- "Recently visited pages" (see UserPreferences)
- Content
- Quick search and additional actions (HelpOnActions)

How do I navigate? #

Searching and Navigation:

Backlinks (click on title)
Icons at top right (HelpOnNavigation)
Title search and full text search at bottom of page

Good places to start your Wiki exploration:

WikiSandBox: Sandbox page to play around and experiment with
RecentChanges: What has changed recently?
SiteNavigation: A list of the different indices of the Wiki
FindPage: Searching the Wiki by various methods
TitleIndex: A list of all pages in the Wiki
WordIndex: A list of all words in page titles (i.e. a list of keywords/concepts in the Wiki)

Using the Editor #

To edit a page, just click on

or on the link "`EditText`" at the end of the page. A form will appear enabling you to change text and save it again. A backup copy of the previous page's content is made each time.

You can check the appearance of the page without saving it by using the preview function - without creating an entry on RecentChanges; additionally there will be an intermediate save of the page content, if you have created a homepage (

is visible).

After editing pages, please leave the edit form by "Save Changes" since otherwise your edits will be lost!

Tips on the Editor #

"Check spelling" examines the text for unknown words.

Within the editor, the usual hotkeys work:

Undo: `CTRL+Z`	Redo: `CTRL+Y`
Copy: `CTRL+C`	Paste: `CTRL+V`
Home: `CTRL+Home`	End: `CTRL+End`

If you discover an interesting format somewhere, just use the "raw" icon to find out how it was done.

In UserPreferences, you can set up the editor to open when you double click a page.

You can subscribe to pages to get a mail on every change of that page. Just click on the envelope icon

at top right of the page.

Text Markup and Links #

To add special formatting to text, just enclose it within markup. There are special notations which are automatically recognized as internal or external links or as embedded pictures.

Input	Display
`''italic'' and '''bold''' and __underlined__`	italic and bold and underlined
`typewriter`	`typewriter`
`^super^script and ,,sub,,script`	^super^script and _subscript
`PageReference WikiSandBox`	PageReference WikiSandBox
`MoinMoin:HelpContents`	HelpContents (InterWiki-Link)
`http://www.web.de/`	http://www.web.de/
`http://www.pythonwiki.de/wiki/img/moinmoin.gif`
`;))`	;)) (Smileys)
	$/!\$ (Marks)
	(Priorities and flags)

For details see HelpOnFormatting, HelpOnLinking and HelpOnSmileys.

Headlines and Paragraphs #

Headlines are placed on a line of their own and surrounded by one to five equal signs denoting the level of the headline. The headline is in between the equal signs, separated by a space. Example:
== Second Level ==

A common error is to insert an additional blank after the ending equal signs!

Paragraphs are lines separated by empty lines or other block structures. This means those lines which directly follow each other belong to one paragraph.

Preformatted text (e.g. a copy of an email) should be placed inside three curly braces ` ... `:

First Line
...
Last Line

For better visual separation, horizontal lines can be generated by using four dashes.

Lists #

item list #

first level
- second Level
- second item
  indented text without bullet
first level again

enumerated list #

first item
second item (automatically enumerated)

Glossary #

Term: Explanation

For details see HelpOnLists.

Tables #

Tables appear if you separate the content of the columns by ||. All fields of the same row must be also on the same line in the editor.

Markup:

||<rowbgcolor="#FFFFE0"> '''Column 1'''  |||| '''Column 2 & 3''' ||
||<)> 1  ||<:> 2 ||<(> 3 ||

Display:

Column 1	Column 2 & 3
1	2	3

For details see HelpOnTables.

Macros #

Macros allow dynamic (computed) content to be inserted into pages.
A macro is called by "MacroName".
The parameters are optional, depending on the macro.
The most important macros:
- TableOfContents - show a local table of contents
- Anchor - defines a link target line
- FootNote - generates a footnote[1]
- PageList - generates lists of pages with titles matching a pattern

For details see HelpOnMacros.

Creating new Pages #

New pages are created by simply adding a new WikiName to an existing page and clicking on it after saving the existing page.

This brings up a page with a variety of possibilities to create the new page:

click on create page to start with an empty page or
click on one of the listed templates to base your page on the content of the selected template.

Below the list of templates you will also find a list of existing pages with a similar name. You should always check this list because someone else might have already started a page about the same subject but named it slightly differently.

For details see HelpOnPageCreation and WikiName.

Actions #

Actions operate either on a single page or on the whole Wiki.

AttachFile: Attach files to a page (HelpOnActions/AttachFile)
DeletePage: Delete a page (after a security question)
LikePages: Lists pages with similar title
LocalSiteMap: List of all pages that are referred to, up to a maximum of 4 levels
SpellCheck: Call check spelling for the current page (HelpOnSpellCheck)

For details see HelpOnActions.

Wikiquette - how do I behave correctly? #

Cooperative Editing #

Basic principle: Anybody logged in can edit anything.

Exceptions:

If you want to edit a page without being disturbed, just write a note to that effect at the top of the page and save that change first.
If two people edit a page simultaneously, the first can save normally, but the second will get a warning and should follow the directions to merge their changes with the already saved data.
Personal Homepages: normally only changed by their owner, but you may append messages at the end of the page

In general, do follow any hints given on a page, there is generally no enforced limit, but you should not blindly ignore other people's wishes.

Organisation and Structure #

Naming
- don't create arbitrary wikinames (OracleDatabase, not OraCle)
- common prefixes (topical correlation)
- common postfixes (same page type, e.g. ...Index)
Index pages
Categories (see CategoryCategory)
Templates
/SubPages (allow shorter links, automatic correlation: HelpOnEditing/SubPages)
Follow the guidance of the Wiki used about how to name pages etc.

Exercises #

For the exercises we use your own Wiki-homepage which is usually based on a WikiName FirstnameLastname:

Configure your UserPreferences.
create and change your homepage (normally FirstnameLastname)
view the changes in the RecentChanges.
try the icons
unrestrained clicking
ask, ask, ask.