User:Shantanuo/wikihelp

wikipedia.org

launched in January 2001
Anyone can add / edit articles
People have written more than 4 Lakh articles
Received the webby award for the year 04

editable anonymously?

wikipedia is based on the following assumptions....
People are generally good.
It seems at first glance to be so open to abuse,

turns out to be so resilient.

Although theoretically possible, vandalism is not a big problem.
Anyone can edit pages without the usual overhead of learning HTML

Wiki Watch

Wiki software seem at first glance to be so open to abuse, but don't worry, system is in place to keep the bad guys away. IP address banning and reverting history page are some of the methods to keep the place clean.
If there is a page on X, then there is also a page to discuss the page on X. I think this keeps the arguments on track.
Click on "Recentpages" link and subscribe to the RSS feed.
Click on "Watch" to add pages you are interested in to your watchlist.

Wiki Culture

Open - Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.
Incremental - Pages can cite other pages, including pages that have not been written yet.
Unified - Page names will be created on the fly.
Observable - Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor to the site.
Convergent - Duplication can be discouraged or removed by finding and citing similar or related content.
Trust - This is at the core of wiki. Trust the people, trust the process, enable trust-building.
Fun - You should always have.

Significance of wikipedia

currently in more than 50 languages.
one of the most fascinating developments of the Digital Age
proof that content and knowledge can also organize themselves.
"the masses" could produce something of value by simply being able to correct each other.
an example of how the grass roots in today's interconnected world can do extraordinary things.
"Signed by authority" concept is not working in the dynamic and fast developing world

Wiki Philosophy

Wikipedia is a fresh and striking exemplification of Friedrich Hayek’s thesis that knowledge is widely distributed among people and that the challenge to society is to create mechanisms for pooling that knowledge. The powerful mechanism that was the focus of Hayek’s work, as of economists generally, is the price system (the market). The newest mechanism is the "wikipedia." There are more than a million articles written in various languages so far. The internet enables the instantaneous pooling (and hence correction, refinement, and amplification) of the ideas and opinions, facts and images, reportage and scholarship, generated by wikipedians. My Wiki Experience At first, it does seem like an add-on and it does take time to explore the different avenues to see the incredible possibilities. But the payoff is enormous! This type of learning gives me credit, a voice, and a stake in the whole process. I'm writing, learning, and engaging in dialogue in a way I had never done before. All this with a simple piece of technology that costs nothing, allows me to publish instantly, receive comments and continue the conversations.

Reluctance to use Wiki

E-mail Habit - "I prefer e-mail"

E-mail doesn't scale - new people, new technology, new customers, new partners...

Fear - "don't want to break the net"
Shared knowledge vs. 'Owners'
Wiki culture: nobody 'owns' pages.

any change can be modified.
First person to create page is not the owner!

'No control' syndrome - "This leads to chaos"

Can be perceived as disruptive by upper management.
Soft security, audit trail, peer review.

Wiki syntax - "yet another language"

Wiki is e-mail, e.g., just *do it*.
Use the help pages, doesn't take long to learn.

Control System:

Login Name or IP address is tracked
You can compare two versions of the page found under the history tab.
Every edit on the site shows up on "Recentchanges" page that is watched by editors. Experts can even subscribe to RSS feed.
Individuals have 'watchlists' that they can (and do) use to keep an eye on particular articles.
If there is a page on X, then there is also a page to discuss the page on X. I think this keeps the arguments on track.
The administrators have the right to "protect" (lock) a page to prevent further edits or to stop a page being moved. The "Edit This Page" link does not appear on such pages. For example the Main page is protected because it used to be vandalized a lot. On other protected pages, usually a boilerplate text is inserted explaining that the page has been locked to prevent "edit wars" while a dispute is resolved by discussion on the talk page. Any user can ask for the protected page to be returned to normal unprotected status, and this is usually done after a day or two.

Risks involved:

The best thing about the Web is also the worst thing!
Information is all over the place and you need to be careful about trusting what you read.
Trust it to be ‘a’ good source of information, but not the only one

wikis for businesses:

Wikis are going private, too.
They're increasingly being used behind corporate firewalls as planning and collaboration tools.

Wikipedia sister sites

Wikipedia for Indian Languages

Google Search: all the text on all the pages is property indexed into the google database.
UNICODE: The standard keyboard layout.
Browser Independent: Works well with IE 6.0 or Firefox.
Simple to use: No need to download any fonts. The user can copy - paste text to word. Once you learn one domain like en.wikipedia.org you can easily use other domains like mr.wikibooks.org
Knowledge Portal: All the knowledge under the sun under one roof!

Registration

Registration not necessary but recommended. You don't need to register to edit the wiki and many respected and valuable users do not.
Registering with wiki is as simple as filling out a simple form. There is no need to provide your primary e-mail address. Your hotmail or secondary email address is OK. If you prefer you can provide no email address at all, but then there will be nowhere to for the Wiki to send your password if you forget it.
You have to register separately with each wiki site. en.wikipedia.org is different from hi.wikipedia.org which has nothing to do with wikibooks (Source text) for e.g. mr.wikibooks.org
But all these sites are run by a single foundation registered under 0law.

Preferences

Once you are a registered user, click on "preferences" and change the following options on the customize page.

Editing:

Add pages you edit to your watchlist and Mark all edits minor by default

Time Zone: (Auto select)

User Pages

You can create your own user page on wiki. You can even host your bio-data here along with images. The normal page ends in wiki/india where as User pages are considered special pages and end something like this... wiki/User:Shantanuo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shantanuo

You can create sub-pages within your User space. For e.g.

To know more Wiki Revolution ((User:Shantanuo/wikihelp|Wiki Tips))

(Change the opening and closing brackets with wiki syntax)

Wiki Language

Recent Changes Test Wiki tags work slightly differently from HTML tags. If you are already familiar with HTML, it's worth spending a few minutes to learn the new tricks. Do you remember how you learned HTML? Yes, correct! by using View menu "Page Source" option. You can learn a lot of tricks by clicking on "Edit" button when you find a nicely formatted page.

If you are new to HTML language, start editing pages. You will learn it over the time.

Here are the formatting tips...
To format text as Heading 1, 2 and 3...

==New section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====

* Lists are easy to do:
** start every line with a star
*** more stars means deeper levels

# Numbered lists are also good
## very organized
## easy to follow

* You can even do mixed lists
*# and nest them
*#* like this

<center> Centered text.</center>
<!-- comment here -->

You can also add tables to the wiki

Title

Top Left Top Right

Bottom Left Bottom Right

1	2
3	4

1	2
3	4

<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center"
|-
| colspan="2" align="center" | ''' Title'''
|-
|Top Left
|Top Right
|-
|Bottom Left
|Bottom Right
|-
|}
</blockquote>

<table align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
   <tr>
      <td>1</td>
      <td>2</td>
   </tr> 
   <tr>
      <td>3</td> 
      <td>4</td> 
   </tr>
</table>
{| 
| 1 || 2
|- 
| 3 || 4
|}