Controlling Changes

History comparison reports highlight the changes between two revisions of a page.Wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them. Thus, while wikis are very open, they provide a means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages. The most prominent, on almost every wiki, is the "Recent Changes" page—a specific list numbering recent edits, or a list of edits made within a given time frame. Some wikis can filter the list to remove minor edits and edits made by automatic importing scripts ("bots").

From the change log, other functions are accessible in most wikis: the revision history shows previous page versions and the diff feature highlights the changes between two revisions. Using the revision history, an editor can view and restore a previous version of the article. The diff feature can be used to decide whether or not this is necessary. A regular wiki user can view the diff of an edit listed on the "Recent Changes" page and, if it is an unacceptable edit, consult the history, restoring a previous revision; this process is more or less streamlined, depending on the wiki software used.

In case unacceptable edits are missed on the "recent changes" page, some wiki engines provide additional content control. It can be monitored to ensure that a page, or a set of pages, keeps its quality. A person willing to maintain pages will be warned of modifications to the pages, allowing him or her to verify the validity of new editions quickly. A watchlist is a common implementation of this.

Some wikis also implement "patrolled revisions," in which editors with the requisite credentials can mark some edits as not vandalism. A "flagged revisions" system can prevent edits from going live until they have been reviewed.

Hand-In-Hand With Facebook

I am becoming a huge fan of using wikis for organizing content within an organization. Thanks to Wetpaint, you can now leverage their power directly on Facebook. The Wiki Whiteboard application enables you to create new ones or join existing ones. Once you create it, you can invite any of your Facebook friends to come and participate.

In comparison to MediaWiki which is frequently criticized for forcing users to learn a new language to modify wiki pages, the Wiki Whiteboard application provides a simple WYSIWYG (”what you see is what you get”) editor to make editing a simple task. Additionally, you can create additional pages within it in order to organize content. Facebook’s restrictions on application canvas page width significantly reduces the usefulness of this application. The effective width of each wiki page is around 400 pixels, less than the width of this blog entry.

I can see this application being integrated into groups. If the majority of your event and group organization takes place within Facebook, this application may be for you. If you want to try out creating your own, go grab the Wiki Whiteboard application.

How to Search

The most common way to find stuff is using the search field at the top of the left column on every page.

To search, type a term or text string in the field and click Search. The wiki will list all possible matches--first page "hits" with matching terms in the title, then pages with matching terms in the body of the article.

To find a page with a specific title, type the name and click Go. The wiki takes you directly to the page with the title that matches the string in the search box (if it exists).

To get to the search options page, leave the search box empty and click either Go or Search.

NOTE: All searches are case-sensitive. If a search fails to return an entry, try searching for capped, mixed-case, then lowercase text to check for possible variants. (For example, "microsoft", "Microsoft", and "MS")

What It Is

What better way to bring an organization together than to allow its members to view and edit information   about the company.  This way, each person can use his/her area of expertise to share with others, therefore enlightening them in various areas.  A wiki is a website that allows users to add and update content on the site using their own web browser. This is made possible by the specified software that runs on the web server. These websites end up being created mainly by a collaborative effort of the site visitors. The name of this project "Wiki" comes from the Hawaiian phrase by the same name, which means "super fast." I would imagine that, if you have thousands of users adding content to a website on a regular basis, the site could grow "super fast." More specifically, my company’s website of this nature is written collectively by employees from all parts of the organization. With a few exceptions, articles can be edited by anyone with access to the company Intranet. However, authorship on this site is not anonymous — every change to a page is tracked on its history page. This special tool has many uses in business, including: collaborating with colleagues across the organization, co-creating & maintaining documents, searching for information that peers create, sharing expertise with the entire business community, and enhancing technological skills.