Wiki Questions and Answers
From Adviceopedia
A wiki questions and answers guide can familiarize you with one of the most popular ways to learn and share information online.
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Wiki Questions and Answers
What Is Wiki?
The beautiful thing about wiki is that anyone can participate. It's a collaborative style of website, so any user can go in and offer information or advice, whether they know almost everything about a subject or just have a fact or two to share. If you're an expert in something, feel free to share on a wiki site; if you're not but you know a few facts about a subject, share those too.
Wiki has been around since 1994, when WikiWikiWeb was born. One of the most used wikis is the multi-lingual encyclopedia, Wikipedia.org. It is one of the top sites in the world. It's owned by The Wikimedia Foundation, which also includes Wiktionary and Wikibooks. The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization.
How Does It Work?
Usually, introductory wiki questions and answers concern how the program works. If you visit a wiki site that allows contributions from anyone, you'll see an edit button near the top. Click it and you'll be able to edit, change, add to, or erase information in the document. You can even include pictures. Each article will be broken into sections with their own edit buttons; so it's easy to locate the subtopics you're most familiar with and add or delete information there. You can also use a bit of code to insert links, pictures, and more. Rest assured, however, that wiki markup is not nearly as confusing as other computer languages.
Wiki Markup
Wiki is designed to be simpler to use than HTML while accomplishing many similar effects. For example, you can make a link to an outside site by surrounding the full link name, a space, and then the text you'd like to show on the finished page with brackets. To provide a link to another article within the site, you'll need a set of double brackets. Between the brackets, you'll type the Article Name|text. The "text" portion you want to show on the finished page. Like this:
[http://www.name.com anchor text] [[Page Name | anchor text]]
Similarly, to categorize your article, you'll use a set of double brackets again. Instead of just typing the category title, however, you'll begin with Category: and then fill in the name of the category where you wish to insert the article. If you see a red link in the final text, the page does not exist yet or there is an error in the link or page name.
For a complete list of wiki formatting tips, visit the Wikipedia markup page.
If I Write Something, Who Has the Rights?
In many cases, you keep the rights to your content and the only thing that's asked of your writings is that you maintain a neutral point of view in your contributions. However, make sure that you read all of the information on the wiki site where you wish to contribute. Rules may differ from one wiki site to another regarding rights, registration, participation, and posting.
Can Wikipedia Be Trusted?
It may seem as if wiki sites like Wikipedia would be unreliable because anyone can contribute. Anyone could be ill informed about a topic, and then submit incorrect information to the site. However, wiki sites have administrators, respected subject experts who can go in and alter the information to ensure that it is correct. This is on top of the millions of readers and contributors who can revise the incorrect information they find.
Don't worry that valuable information will be lost if someone does decide to vandalize a page; there is a page history option that will take the article back to its previous condition and IP addresses can be recorded and blocked when necessary. If the problems are obvious, administrators and other users aren't even required to correct them; there are software robots to do the job right away.
Who Can Contribute to Wiki Sites?
Anyone can contribute. There's no HTML experience necessary. You simply supply an article, part of an article, or a comment. You can even add an image by clicking on Upload File on the left side of the page. Some sites have a staff of writers who prepare the main articles and then comments and edits from anyone are allowed. With other wiki sites, anyone can submit or contribute to a document, but setting up an account (usually free) may be required for access to all pages.
Anyone can start up a wiki site and invite others to add to and change it. If you're an educator, you can even set up a wiki site where your students can learn and share ideas. You'll be able to upload files, so if there are short movie clips or photos you'd like them to see, you can add them there for a full educational experience.
Other sites where you can start your own wiki include:
What Software Should I Download?
If you use one of the aforementioned sites, you won't need to download any additional software as everything is taken care of for you. However, if you wish to design your own as a new project you're building or add on to one you currently own, you can download MediaWiki. It's free. It was designed for Wikipedia, but now it's available for more widespread use.
What Can I Learn on Wiki Sites?
The short answer is: anything you want to know, from financial advice to how to apply makeup. Anyone can contribute, and everyone has different areas of expertise, tidbits of information to share, and more. Wikis grow incredibly fast and if you have a question for wiki, chances are good that you'll find your answer almost effortlessly. --CrystalSchwanke 15:31, 30 January 2010 (EST)
