kadyellebee: What is a Wiki?

I’ve had several people ask me what a wiki is. Truthfully, I didn’t know until a few months ago!

from an email to Lisa last night:

A wiki is a collection of pages that allow participation. Any visitors can add topics or edit the current ones. The structure of the site is topic-based, with each topic having a parent (like MT Glossary, Template Tags, etc).

It’s a free sharing of knowledge. Which lends itself to FAQ sites well!

If you’d like to test it out before adding actual MT info, I created a test page: ATestForEditing. Wiki’s use words collapsed together without spaces and capital letters. You’ll see that when you visit. If you aren’t ready to register your username for the wiki, use the username/password of WikiGuest/guest when prompted.

Now go ahead, visit the test page, and click the EDIT link on the bottom of the page. Leave a note there.

And you’ve just added your first bit of info to a Wiki! Way to go!

For the next step, you can check out the MT WebTopicList. Its got all of the current MT topics that people have submitted to the Wiki. Is there one that you have a note to share on? Click the link and then click EDIT at the bottom of the page and add your note. Is there a question that you remember asking when you first started out? Check out the FrequentlyAskedQuestions page, and create a NEW page by typing the name into the GO box on the top of the screen. It will ask you if you want to create a new page or search, and then give you a screen to type your question and answer into the Wiki. When you save it, now it will appear with the other FAQs for people to reference to.

If you’d like to get notifications when a new topic is added to the MT pages, there’s an RSS feed for the topics that you can add: http://www.virtualvenus.org/wiki/view/MT/WebRss?skin=rss.

Hope that got you introduced to a Wiki without being confusing. Any feedback or questions are welcomed here or on the virtual venus page