Wiki Introduction
Contents
introduction
For Beyond Social, we choose to work with Mediawiki software as a publishing experiment.
What is it?
MediaWiki software
Wiki Wiki Web
"You're browsing a database with a program called Wiki Wiki Web. And the program has an attitude. The program wants everyone to be an author. So, the program slants in favor of authors at some inconvenience to readers."
WikiWikiWeb, first wiki, launched in 1995 by Ward Cunningham
Free Software
Four freedoms:
- run
- study
- share
- modify
The source code is open, (often) well documented and published under a free and open license, as an alternative for the everlasting strength of copyright.
Which in the basis is meant to form decentralized and non-proprietory projects.
A preference that influences many more design choices that are made to create software. In Mediawiki software, there is not one editor, not one login to the system, not even one writing style.
Other projects that use Mediawiki software:
- Digital Craft wiki
- Lostpedia - about TV show Lost
- Uncyclopedia - the content-free encyclopedia
- Monoskop, an archive wiki for collaborative studies of the arts, media and humanities.
- Mondoteque, a project by art organisation Constant, Brussels
- Publication Studio WdKA
- MMD&C - PZI wiki
- Yale University School of Arts
Mediawiki & Beyond Social
The choice for Mediawiki software is to make a shared collection of references, documentation of events and student projects. The shared aspect was crucial for me to choose for the software. Mediawiki software is written and made to create and maintain a community driven resource.
As everything that is uploaded to the wiki is hosted on the same server, it is also a way to create an archive for a community of Social Art & Design.
What does a wiki enable?
- Everyone (with an account) can create a page
- Stimulates to write, reading & writing in the same interface
- Quick articles that are not finished (as invitation to write) - for example
- Red links (as invitation to write) - for example
- Talk Pages, as a 'backside' of an article to discuss ... - for example
- Saves editing history - for example, which is both
- a layer of 'security' to not loose editing work
- possibility of inspection of how a page came about
- Produces many many layers of sociality meta data (SpecialPages)
- Include multiple voices (instead of one editing voice)
What does it not enable?
- There is a specific syntax, wiki mark up language, in which you need to write. This can be quite a threshold to learn. - More information and help can be found in the manual
- Intuitive WP-like inserting of images, this takes a few extra steps - Special:Upload, In the article form
Design questions
- How can we experiment with those elements in the publishing proces?
- How can we include the sociality layers that the software produces as a type of content?
- How does it change the way of writing?
- Working on somebody else's article
- Writing quick and short articles as a way to collect and share references?
step-by-step
Create Account
- real name or pseudonym
- sign the Privacy Statement
Make User Page
- Form:Profile
- just blanco page
Make project page
- Create Article, Form:Article