public wikis: sharing knowledge over the internet

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Technical Communication Wiki : Chapter 2 This page last changed on Apr 15, 2009 by kjp15. Public Wikis: Sharing Knowledge over the Internet What is a public wiki? A public wiki refers to a wiki that everyone can edit, that is, it is open to the general public on the Internet with or without a free login. Anyone is welcome to add information to the wiki, but contributors are asked to stay within the subject area, policies, and standards of the particular wiki. Content that does not relate to the subject or is not of good quality can and will be deleted by other users. Also, if a contributor makes a mistake or a typo, other users will eventually correct the error. Open collaboration by anyone means that multiple articles can be written very fast simultaneously. And, while there may be some vandalism or edit wars, quality of the articles will generally improve over time after many editors have contributed. The biggest public wiki in the world, with over 75,000 contributors, is Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" [1]. Wikipedia has over 2.8 million articles in the English version, which includes over 16 million wiki pages, and is one of the top ten most popular websites in the United States [2]. There are versions of Wikipedia in ten different languages, and articles in more than 260 languages. Wikipedia is operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation [3] which pays a small group of employees and depends mainly on donations. There are also over 1,500 volunteer administrators with special powers to keep an eye on editors and make sure they conform to Wikipedia's guidelines and policies. Contributions made to most public wikis remain the property of their creators and are formally licensed to the public under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). The GFDL license ensures the content is freely distributable and reproducible. For example, articles on Wikipedia can be copied, modified, and re-distributed provided that the copy is made available for free and acknowledges the authors (usually by providing a link back to the article). This principle is sometimes called copyleft and is similar to the way free software is licensed and distributed [4]. However, care should be taken when copying articles from Wikipedia because some users have uploaded copyrighted material, against Wikipedia's policies, and copying that material can violate the copyright of its owner. Eventually, the copyright material will be detected and removed by Wikipedia editors. Examples of public wikis While Wikipedia is the most well-known public wiki, it is certainly not the only one. The following describes several large public wikis that anyone can contribute to. Wikitravel is a free, collaborative, world-wide travel guide that contains over 21,000 destination guides and articles. Inspired by the success of Wikipedia, Wikitravel was started in 2003 and designed to give travelers more up-to-date and complete information than can be found in a book. Anyone can sign up and become a Wikitraveller, edit and contribute to articles, or ask questions in the Travellers' pub. Document generated by Confluence on Apr 15, 2009 16:57 Page 1

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Page 1: Public Wikis: Sharing Knowledge over the Internet

Technical Communication Wiki : Chapter 2

This page last changed on Apr 15, 2009 by kjp15.

Public Wikis: Sharing Knowledge over theInternet

What is a public wiki?

A public wiki refers to a wiki that everyone can edit, that is, it is open to the general public on theInternet with or without a free login. Anyone is welcome to add information to the wiki, but contributorsare asked to stay within the subject area, policies, and standards of the particular wiki. Content that doesnot relate to the subject or is not of good quality can and will be deleted by other users. Also, if acontributor makes a mistake or a typo, other users will eventually correct the error. Open collaborationby anyone means that multiple articles can be written very fast simultaneously. And, while there may besome vandalism or edit wars, quality of the articles will generally improve over time after many editorshave contributed.

The biggest public wiki in the world, with over 75,000 contributors, is Wikipedia, "the free encyclopediathat anyone can edit" [1]. Wikipedia has over 2.8 million articles in the English version, which includesover 16 million wiki pages, and is one of the top ten most popular websites in the United States [2].There are versions of Wikipedia in ten different languages, and articles in more than 260 languages.Wikipedia is operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation [3] which pays a small group of employeesand depends mainly on donations. There are also over 1,500 volunteer administrators with special powersto keep an eye on editors and make sure they conform to Wikipedia's guidelines and policies.

Contributions made to most public wikis remain the property of their creators and are formally licensed tothe public under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). The GFDL license ensures the content isfreely distributable and reproducible. For example, articles on Wikipedia can be copied, modified, andre-distributed provided that the copy is made available for free and acknowledges the authors (usually byproviding a link back to the article). This principle is sometimes called copyleft and is similar to the wayfree software is licensed and distributed [4]. However, care should be taken when copying articles fromWikipedia because some users have uploaded copyrighted material, against Wikipedia's policies, andcopying that material can violate the copyright of its owner. Eventually, the copyright material will bedetected and removed by Wikipedia editors.

Examples of public wikis

While Wikipedia is the most well-known public wiki, it is certainly not the only one. The followingdescribes several large public wikis that anyone can contribute to.

Wikitravel is a free, collaborative, world-wide travel guide that contains over 21,000 destination guidesand articles. Inspired by the success of Wikipedia, Wikitravel was started in 2003 and designed to givetravelers more up-to-date and complete information than can be found in a book. Anyone can sign upand become a Wikitraveller, edit and contribute to articles, or ask questions in the Travellers' pub.

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WikiHow is a collaborative wiki project with the goal of building the world's largest, highest quality how-tomanual. The free wiki contains over 52,000 articles on an eclectic range of subjects including, "How tosurvive a long fall," "How to plant a tree," and "How to deal with a difficult daughter-in-law." Articles areorganized in categories such as Arts & Entertainment, Family Life, Health, Relationships, Food &Entertaining, and Computers & Electronics which are broken down into subcategories, such as Books,Costumes, Movies, and Music, which are further broken down into more specific categories ,such asBands and DJs, Musical Instruments, Music Listening and Appreciation, and Songs and Song Writing.

Wikia Entertainment Network contains thousands of entertainment-related wikis that anyone can edit,including wikis dedicated to movies, TV, books, and comics. The biggest entertainment wikis have over5,000 pages and include:

• Wookieepedia: over 65,000 pages about Star Wars.• Marvel Comics: over 49,000 articles on Marvel comics and characters, including a Strength Scale

which is an attempt to rank all of the Marvel characters in order of raw physical strength, withreferences to support their conclusions. Many of the pages seem to be locked to prevent editing.

• Memory Alpha: over 29,000 pages, this is the definitive, accurate encyclopedia for everythingrelated to Star Trek.

• Muppet Wiki: over 18,000 pages about Jim Henson and the Muppets. Requires the user to login toedit pages.

• Klingon Dictionary: over 7,000 articles on the fictional language spoken by the Klingons on StarTrek.

• Lostpedia: over 5,000 articles about the popular TV show Lost, complete with spoiler warnings.

Wikia also hosts Wikia Gaming which has hundreds of wiki fansites for Xbox, PS3, Wii, PC, and handheldgamers, and a variety of other wikis such as the Recipes Wiki (with 48,000 recipes including 190 dog foodrecipes) and the Psychology Wiki (with over 25,000 articles in 17 subjects related to psychology).

There are also "hybrid" websites that contain some regular webpages with fixed content and some wikipages where readers can share their knowledge and experience. An example is Dave's Garden which is awebsite for beginning and experienced gardeners around the world. There are featured articles on fixedwebpages, hundreds of forums on home and gardening topics where readers can share advice andknowledge, thousands of gardening blogs and the opportunity for users to create their own blog, andseveral wikis where gardeners can share their expertise and information about plants, bugs, birds, andinsects.

Another form of public wikis are industry-oriented wikis, such as KeyContent.org and the CarolinaChapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). Both are non-profit organizations that havewikis for discussions and articles related to technical communication.

The mission of KeyContent is to provide a place for users to instantly publish articles and express theirviews about the technical communication profession. Currently, there are over 180 articles with theoldest dating back to 2004 on subjects such as social networking, wiki-fying documents, humor aboutXML, and news of the profession. Since KeyContent has free and open registration for industryprofessionals, a basic guide for editing the KeyContent wiki is given later in this chapter.

The STC has updated their website to use a wiki-based content management system which allowsmembers, after logging in, to edit and update some of the pages including sharing their resumes. Accessto the STC wiki is limited to dues-paying members of the organization and many of the pages are locked,allowing users only to monitor a page and to view the history of the page (click on the history tab), butnot edit the page.

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Software used by public wikis

Wikipedia, Wikitravel, wikiHow, and Wikia all use the free, open-source MediaWiki software, so they sharea similar appearance. MediaWiki was originally written for use on Wikipedia but is now used by manyother wikis. Editing and creating pages is accomplished in a similar way for all of these sites. At the top ofeach page, there are tabs that say Article, Edit or Edit this page, Discuss or Discussion, andHistory. The tabs on Wikia may look different, but the same tabs are present. If a page is locked forediting, such as the main pages of the sites, the Edit tab will not appear. For a locked page on Wikia,Edit this page will be replaced with View source which shows the wiki markup but does not let youchange it. There are many reasons to lock a page from editing including protecting the main informationabout a wiki or to settle controversies and prevent constant bickering over the content.

Many of the public wikis give you the option of editing pages anonymously or creating an account. Toregister an account is free and your user ID will show up on the history page when you make edits. If youdon't login, either "anonymous" or your IP address will show up. On wikiHow, the contributors to anarticle are listed at the bottom of the page. If readers click on a name, they are sent to the author'sAbout Me page which gives details about the author and lists the articles they have written or to whichthey have contributed.

Each of the sites allows editing and formatting using the wiki markup language and a Rich Text orWYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface, usually at the same time. For example, users canclick a button to make text bold or they can type in the markup language (''') to make text bold. OnwikiHow, the user has the option of using Guided Editing, which has sections such as Introduction, Steps,Video, Tips, Warnings, Related wikiHow articles, and Sources and Citations that the user can fill out usingthe wiki markup language. Then, there is a button called Advanced Editing at the top of the page, wherethe user can use a Rich Text interface for formatting, but the sections do not appear. While the Richtext toolbar for each site is slightly different, they all are similar to the toolbar on Wikipedia whichis shown in Figure 2-2 in the following section.

KeyContent.org and STC Carolina use TikiWiki software for their wikis. TikiWiki is more than just wikisoftware; it is a content management system that includes many other tools as well, such as blogs,calendars, and forums. TikiWiki can be customized with different "skins" or themes, including differentcolors and layouts. For example, Keycontent designed their own theme using a turquoise green color,icons instead of tabs at the top of the page, and a tag cloud at the top right. More details on KeyContentare included in a later section. On the STC website, if the user has the authority to change a page, therewill be edit and monitor page tabs at the top of the page. If a user has logged in, but does not have theauthority to edit a page, there will be no edit tab, only monitor page and history tabs. If a user is notlogged in or is not a member, the page looks like a regular webpage with no tabs at all.

Editing pages in Wikipedia (MediaWiki software)

Many public wikis say that the number one rule of wiki editing is to be bold. Jump right in and makechanges. You can't mess up a wiki because someone else can come behind you and fix the mistakes youmake, and there is always the History tab where previous versions of the page are saved. Editing a pagecan range from fixing a typo or spelling error to adding a link or a whole paragraph or page of text.

The following describes how to edit a page in Wikipedia, using their MediaWiki software. A similarprocedure would be used for other wikis that use MediaWiki. (You can tell a site uses MediaWiki bylooking at the bottom of the page. There is usually an icon that says "Powered by MediaWiki.")

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Create an account

Go to http://www.wikipedia.org. The home page is shown in Figure 2-1. Click on English for the Englishversion of Wikipedia. In the upper righthand corner of the screen, click on Log in / create account.Enter your Username and Password or click Create one to create an account. It's free to register anaccount and then your username will show up on the history page when you make edits. If you don'twant to create an account, simply navigate to a page in Wikipedia you want to edit. Your IP address willbe recorded publicly on the history page.

Figure 2-1. The Wikipedia home page showing the Wikipedia versions around the world.

There are several benefits to creating an account and logging in. When you login for the first time, youcan follow the links to learn the basics of Wikipedia. When you are logged in, a fifth tab called Watchappears at the top of the page. If you click on the Watch tab, you will add the page to your watchlist,which will list any edits made to the page. You can then click on my watchlist in the upper righthandcorner of the page to check for updates to your watched pages. To remove a page from your watchlist,click on the Unwatch tab at the top of the page. There are other links in the upper righthand corner ofthe page that you get when you log in, namely:

• my talk, where other users can post messages for you;• my preferences, where you can change your password and your email address, you can select a

multitude of options for your files, your watchlist, and your searches, and you can enable a numberof gadgets, which you are warned to use responsibly or risk being blocked; and

• my contributions, where you can see a list of all the edits you have made.

Another benefit of creating an account is that you can create your own user subpage, where you can startwriting your articles without them being scrutinized, and you can create your own user sandbox topractice editing.

Practice editing

After logging in, or choosing not to, you can practice editing pages in the Wikipedia:Sandbox. If you do

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not see a link for the sandbox, enter "Wikipedia:Sandbox" in the search box on the left side of the pageand click Go. (Note that you must include the colon.) You can also navigate directly to a page you wantto edit. In either case, click on the edit this page tab at the top of the page. The page transforms intoan editable webpage and you can see the wiki markup throughout the text. The toolbar shown in Figure2-2 appears.

Figure 2-2. The Rich Text editing toolbar in Wikipedia. The numbers below the icons wereadded for reference--they do not appear on Wikipedia.

The icons on the toolbar in Figure 2-2 stand for the following commands:

1. Bold text (you can also use Ctrl-b as a shortcut)2. Italic text (you can also use Ctrl-i as a shortcut)3. Internal link--when you highlight a word or phrase and click Internal link, Wikipedia will

automatically find a related Wikipedia page and create a link to it. The text turns blue, indicating itis a link. This works really well for places, like cities and states. If Wikipedia cannot find a relatedpage, the text will turn red, indicating that the page does not yet exist.

4. External link (remember http:// prefix)--generates the text: [http://www.example.com link title].Insert the web address, leave a space, then type the title of the link (link text will turn blue).

5. Level 2 headline6. Embedded file--embeds a picture that you upload to Wikipedia7. File link8. Mathematical formula9. Ignore wiki formatting--this option can be used if you want the actual wiki commands to be

displayed in your text or if you want asterisks or brackets in your text.10. Your signature with timestamp--adds your user ID or your IP address if you're not logged in, the

time, and the date.11. Horizontal line (use sparingly)12. Redirect--sends the user to another page with a similar topic. Used for synonyms or variations of

the same subject to avoid duplicate pages.13. Strike--text with a line through it14. Line break15. Superscript16. Subscript17. Small--text in a smaller font18. Insert hidden comment--text only shows on the edit page, not on the actual page19. Insert a picture gallery--default is a table with spaces for two images each with a caption, as shown

in Figure 2-320. Insert block of quoted text21. Insert a table--default is three rows and three columns22. Insert a reference--generates the text: <ref>Insert footnote text here</ref>. Insert your reference

or footnote between the tags. They will automatically be numbered, but they will not automaticallybe listed at the bottom of the page. You must go to the end of your article, make a heading called"References", and type

{{reflist}}.

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CautionOther users can be changing the Sandbox at the same time you are, which could result in editingconflicts. Wikipedia will show a warning and let you compare the changes you made to those theother user made. Of course, for the Sandbox, it doesn't matter much, but for an actual page, youwould have to merge your changes into the existing text.

Figure 2-3 shows the Wikipedia:Sandbox where the user has practiced some basic formatting. The wikimarkup shown was automatically generated when the user clicked an icon on the menu bar. Once youhave added some text or made some changes, click on the Show preview button below the Sandbox.You can see what your text will look like before you save it. If you like it, click on the Save page button.Your text will become the new webpage--until someone else changes it.

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Figure 2-3. The Wikipedia:Sandbox with some practice formatting. Top image shows theediting view; bottom image shows the resulting page.

Find articles to edit

Once you have practiced in the Sandbox, be bold and find other pages to edit or add to. It's a good ideato start wikiing by editing articles first. Once you feel comfortable with that, you can add new pagesand develop new articles.

A good place to start is by finding some red text, that is, a link to a page that does not yet exist. Tocreate a new page, click on the red hyperlink. A new blank page will open up with the red hyperlink asthe title. Before writing a new page, search Wikipedia to see if there is a related page where you canredirect the user to avoid duplication, for example if the link is "hunger" you can redirect the user to the"malnutrition" page. To insert a redirect, go to the new blank page and click on the redirect icon (#R oricon number 12 in Figure 2-2). The text "#REDIRECT [[Target page name]]" will appear. Type the nameof the related page, e.g. "malnutrition," where "Target page name" appears.Another good place to start is to flesh out a Wikipedia stub. A stub is a very short article, sometimes onlya few sentences long, that needs expansion. A stub contains useful information but is too short to be ofencyclopedic quality [5]. You can either randomly run across a stub while you are researching a topic ofinterest, or you can search the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting page to find a list of thousands ofstubs organized into categories.

Create a new article

If you don't find a page on the topic you are interested in, you can create a new page. Before starting anarticle on Wikipedia, read their official policies and guidelines, summarized as five pillars [6]. The five

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pillars of Wikipedia are:

1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so all articles must be factual, verifiable, and referenced. Wikipedia isnot a dictionary, a soapbox, an advertising platform, a forum for personal ideas or experiences, or aplace to present original research (because it cannot be verified).

2. Wikipedia must have a neutral point of view. Newer articles tend to be more biased, but aftermultiple edits, articles become more neutral over time. Articles can represent multiple points ofview, with each one having equal weight and verification.

3. Wikipedia is free content that can be edited by anyone. The GNU Free Documentation Licenseensures that the content remains free even if copied or redistributed. Articles are not owned by anyindividual and can be freely and mercilessly edited by others.

4. Wikipedia has a code of conduct including, be civil, avoid personal attacks and edit wars, andrespecting other Wikipedians even when you may not agree with them. Practice the three-revertrule: do not return a page to an earlier version (revert the page) in whole or in part more than threetimes in 24 hours, except if you revert your own actions or obvious vandalism or copyrightinfringement.

5. Wikipedia does not have firm rules, so be bold in editing articles and don't worry about makingmistakes.

To create a new article, follow these steps:

• Search Wikipedia first to make sure the article does not already exist, possibly under a differenttitle.

• Login. You must have a user id to create a new article.• Develop a stubstantial amount of content for the article off-line or in your user sandbox. New

articles with minimal content may be speedily deleted.• Gather reliable, published references to show sources for your information.• Be sure your article is notable and does not contain copyrighted text or images.• Create a new page using one of the following methods:

° Highlight a word or phrase, create an internal link (text turns red), save the page, click on thered link, then click Start the... article.

° Search for the new title, and when the search finds nothing, click on Create this page.° Type a new URL in the browser address bar using underscores instead of spaces

between words in the title. For example, typehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Continuing_Education to start a page about the DukeContinuing Education program. Then, click Start the Duke Continuing Education articlelink.

• Type or copy in your content including references and weblinks.• Consider adding the message shown in Figure 2-5 to the top of your article so it will not be deleted

while you work on it.

Template messages and tags

Wikipedia has many template messages that you may see at the top of an article or within anarticle. These messages are designed to give helpful information to users or to warn about sub-standardcontent. Several are shown in Figure 2-4, but there are many more (see [7]). Editors can flag pages witha message by adding the appropriate tag directly to the wiki syntax. This is an advanced topic forbeginning editors, so practice in the Wikipedia Sandbox before adding a message to an actual article.

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Figure 2-4. Examples of some of the warnings and messages that appear on Wikipedia articles.

To tag an article with the messages shown in Figure 2-4, go to the top of the page (or wherever you wantthe message to appear) and type, respectively:

{{coi\|date=type in current month and year}}{{primarysources\|date=type in current month and year}}{{cleanup-section}}{{globalize\|date=type in current month and year}}{{Original research\|date=type in current month and year}}

Note that adding the date is optional, and for some template messages the date is not included. Anothermessage that may be useful for new articles is shown in Figure 2-5. To generate the message, use thetag

{{underconstruction}} or {{construction}}.

Figure 2-5. A useful message to add to a new article you're working on.

Other terms to know

There are several other terms that are useful to know in Wikipedia, such as:

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• Disambiguation page: a page that lists articles associated with the same title, for example, type"stub" into the search box on Wikipedia and you will get a page directing you to a more specificpage, such as pay stub, stub network, and stub (circuit).

• Edit conflict: warning that appears if another user makes an edit to a page while you are in theprocess of editing it. Your edit will not take effect, but you are prompted to merge your edit with theprevious one.

• History page: tab at the top of each wiki page that lists all the previous versions of the page and theuser name (or IP address) of the one who changed them.

• Wikification or wikify: to format using the wiki markup, as opposed to plain text or HTML, and to addinternal links to incorporate the article fully into Wikipedia.

• Wikilink: a link to another Wikipedia page, as opposed to an external link to an outside website.

For a complete set of terms commonly used in Wikipedia, see the Wikipedia:Glossary.To learn more about Wikipedia, go through the Wikipedia:Tutorial.

Editing a page in KeyContent (TikiWiki software)

Editing a wiki page in KeyContent.org is a little different than in Wikipedia because they use TikiWikisoftware and not MediaWiki. TikiWiki CMS/Groupware (also called Tiki) includes more than just wikisoftware. It is a content management system (CMS) that includes many tools, such as discussion forums,blogs, news articles, a calendar, and RSS feeds, that can keep track of content [8]. Tiki is a free, opensource software that was developed by an international community with over 200 people contributing towrite the code.

KeyContent operates under the Creative Commons copyright. All articles are owned by their copyrightholder(s) and published under the Creative Commons license [9]. Under this license, users are free tocopy and modify the content provided that they give the original author(s) credit, that the work is notused for commercial purposes, and that the Creative Commons license is applied to the modified work aswell.

The home page of KeyContent.org is shown below in Figure 2-6.

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Figure 2-6. The home page of KeyContent.org.

Create an account

To edit or add articles to KeyContent, you must register to get a username and password. Benefits ofregistering include being able to post comments, edit articles, and get your own personal wiki page.There are several links to the registration page. One is on the green menu on the left side of the pagecalled Sign up (free) to see more.

Once you are registered, login by entering your username and password in the boxes at the upper left ofthe page. After logging in, you can create your personal wiki page, by clicking My KeyContent (directlyunder your name in the upper left of the page), then selecting Preferences from the dropdown menu.On the User Preferences page, under the first section called Personal Information, it will list the name ofyour personal wiki page, for example "UserPageKristie.Phillips," followed by the blue weblink Create.When you click Create, the wiki page is transformed to an editable page and you can add your content inthe same way you edit an article, described in the following section. Be sure to click Save at the bottomof the page or you will lose your changes and your page will not be created. Once your wiki page iscreated, it will show up under your My Contributions page (click on My KeyContent in the upper leftcorner of the page, then select My Contributions from the dropdown menu). Your personal wiki page isa great place to practice using the wiki syntax or to start an article, building up content until you areready to share it live.

Practice editing

To practice editing, either go to your personal wiki page or click on Articles at the top right of the pageand select Sample Article (Sandbox) from the dropdown menu.

Instead of having tabs at the top of the page as in Wikipedia, Tiki software has a small line of icons at the

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top right of the page. The icons that appear change according to the content type on the page.The History icon (see Figure 2-8) seems to only show up when you have contributed to a page andthen lists all the previous edits to the article. So, for most articles, you cannot see the history of theedits, however, contributors to the article are listed at the bottom of the page in a gray box, along withthe last person who edited the page and when the page was last updated.

To edit a page, either click on the Edit This Page weblink at the top center of the page, or click on theEdit icon (paper and pencil), as shown in Figure 2-7. If you are using your personal wiki page, you willsee three additional icons, as shown in Figure 2-8.

Figure 2-7. Icons shown at the top right of the screen on the Sample Key Article page inKeyContent. From left to right, the icons stand for: Edit, Print, PDF, Email this page, andMonitor this page.

Figure 2-8. Icons shown on your personal wiki page. From left to right, the icons stand for:History, Comments, Attachments, Edit, Print, PDF, Email this page, and Stop monitoring thispage.

After clicking Edit this page, the webpage transforms to into fields that you can edit. You can use wikisyntax to edit the article directly or you can click on the Quicktags link to use the Quicktags toolbar,shown in Figure 2-9. Clicking on an Quicktag icon generates the wiki syntax for you, however, you cannotsee how the page will actually look until you preview or save the article. You can also click on the small,gray box Wiki Help at the bottom of the page to get more information about the wiki syntax.

Figure 2-9. The Quicktags toolbar from KeyContent.org (TikiWiki software). Numbers underthe icons were added for reference--they do not appear on KeyContent.

The icons on the Quicktags toolbar in Figure 2-9 stand for the following commands:

1. title bar: makes highlighted text bold and puts it in a green shaded box2. text, underline3. text, monospace: typically used for writing code4. text, line break5. text, italic6. text, bold

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7. text, align right8. text, align right (yes, it's a duplicate!)9. text, align center

10. table, normal: simple table with light green shading; three rows and two columns are the default11. table, fancy: table with three rows and two columns where the header row (top row) is shaded dark

green, the first row is shaded light green, and the second row is white12. submit to social network: this generates the text "share this page:" followed by a menu bar with

icons for 20 social networking websites; clicking on any of these icons will send you away from theKeyContent site

13. style, color: makes the highlighted text red, however, you can rewrite the HTML color code to insertthe color you want

14. no formatting: removes the wiki formatting so you can use brackets or asterisks, or show wikicommands in your text

15. list, numbered16. list, bulleted17. link, wiki page18. link, external19. image20. hr: gives a horizontal line across the page21. heading3: smallest heading, black text22. heading2: medium heading, dark green text23. heading1: largest heading, dark green text24. color (another duplicate icon!): makes the highlighted text red25. box: puts the highlighted text in a box26. special characters: includes foreign letters, Greek letters, and the Registered and Trademark

symbols

Find an article to edit

Once you have practiced editing, search for an actual article that you want to edit. At the top right of thepage, click on Articles and, from the dropdown menu, select either Newest Articles, List All Articles,or Browse Categories. There are 11 categories with the most articles being found in the Practices,Tools, Basics, Business, and Industry categories. The Published Articles category contains finished articlesthat have been submitted to KeyContent and approved by the editorial board. These articles cannot beedited, and the individual authors hold the copyright. Information about the author is at the bottom ofthe page.

Create a new article

If you cannot find the article you are interested in, you can create a new article. KeyContent acceptsseveral kinds of articles, including reviews of electronic and print resources, software applications, andnew technologies or products. Most reviews should be a minimum of 800 words. Check KeyContent'ssubmission guidelines for more information and a style and format guideline [10].

To create a new article, first login, then click on Articles at the top right of the page, and from thedropdown menu, select Start New Article. Enter the name of your article (you can change it later), andclick Create Article. Choose the category from the dropdown menu that best fits your article. You canchoose to apply a template to your article that contains some basic formatting such as headings, bulletedlists, and a navigational box showing an outline of the headings. Any parts of the template that youdon't need can be deleted. Edit the article title if needed and write or copy and paste your article in the

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Edit box. You can include notes to yourself or ideas you don't want to forget in the My Footnotes box.This box is not part of the article and is not visible to others.

Enter several keywords, or tags, in the Folksonomy Tags box. Some are suggested for you if you can'tthink of any. Folksonomy is a term meaning to collaboratively create and manage tags to categorizecontent, also known as collaborative tagging or social tagging [11]. Generally, keywords are chosenfreely instead of choosing from a controlled list of traditional subject headings. KeyContent uses a tagcloud, or a weighted list in a visual design [12], to show the tags in their folksonomy. See the right sideof the KeyContent home page in Figure 2-6. The tag cloud is called "Key Tags" and includes the top 50tags used on the site. In a tag cloud, tags are listed alphabetically, and the importance or popularity of atag is shown by font size or color (more popular tags are bigger).

You can also check the Spellcheck box to spell check your article when you click on Preview. Be sure toclick the Save button to save your changes.

References

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About[2]http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/top-10-most-popular-websites-in-the-states-596744.html[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stub[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_five_pillars_of_Wikipedia[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tags[8] http://info.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons[10] http://www.keycontent.org/tiki-index.php?page=submission+guidelines[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud

List of Links

The following websites were linked to this chapter:http://www.wikipedia.orghttp://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Pagehttp://www.wikihow.com/Main-Pagehttp://entertainment.wikia.comhttp://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Portal:Mainhttp://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Muppet_Wikihttp://mughom.wikia.com/wiki/tlhIngan_Hol_mu%27ghom:ghItlh%27a%27http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikiahttp://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Recipes_Wikihttp://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://davesgarden.comhttp://www.keycontent.org/tiki-index.php?page=Homehttp://www.stc-carolina.orghttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_typeshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_five_pillars_of_Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tagshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Glossary#Wiki_markuphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorialhttp://keycontent.org/tiki-index.php?page=Homehttp://info.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.phphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commonshttp://www.keycontent.org/tiki-index.php?page=submission+guidelines

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