Basics+of+Use+&+Anatomy

toc =** Article or Content Page **=

The article or content page is the page users see when they first visit the wiki or any of the pages of the wiki. This contains the content that is collaboratively created by the users. If users have editing rights, the article or content page can be edited by clicking on the “edit this page” button. Options for managing the page include editing, viewing revisions history, and discussing the content of the page with other users. These options are usually listed in tabs at the top of the page, however, some wikis such as PBWorks and WetPaint locate these options elsewhere on the page.

The process of adding content or editing content on a page is usually done with a basic visual editor much like the editing tools used in Microsoft Word. All wikis allow some markup language, but even novice users can add content or edit content without knowing the markup language. For more information on the markup language — or syntax — of the four wikis discussed in this book, please see the Appendix.

One word of caution: Wiki pages and articles cannot be edited synchronously. If two or more people are editing a wiki content page at the same time, some of those edits will be lost when both people attempt to save the edits.

=** Discussion Page **=

The Discussion page allows wiki users to communicate about the content of the page or article with which it is associated. You can think of this as a message board specifically for one article or one page. Each article or page has its own discussion or talk page. On the free wiki farm wikis, the discussion pages resemble traditional message boards on other websites, while on MediaWiki and other open-source packages the discussion page is simply just a blank page open for editing much like the article or content page. Wikispaces and MediaWiki both use the term “discussion” for this page and both place the link as a tab at the top of the page. Google Sites, PBWorks, and WetPaint refer to this feature as “comments” and both locate the “comments” at the bottom of each wiki page. On Wikispaces or MediaWiki, you go to the discussion page by clicking on the “discussion” tab at the top of your wiki page.

On Google Sites, PBWorks or WetPaint, you go to the comments section by scrolling down to the bottom of the page. There is no need to click on a tab, but users do have to be logged in to leave comments on the page.

= **Revision History** =

The history tab contains all the saved revisions of the article or wiki page. Users are able to see the history of revisions, to compare various versions, and to restore previous edits by viewing this tab. Teachers find this feature helpful when tracking student participation on group projects, and all education users will find it helpful to not only be able to see what revisions were made, but to also be able to revert to previous revisions if a page or article becomes corrupted through the editing process.

=** The importance of TAGGING **=

As you can probably guess, a wiki can become quite large if there are many people contributing articles and edits. Any large database or collection of documents is useless if we are not able to locate the information that is most important to us. As we discussed previously, all wiki articles can be located through the handy “search” function but they become even easier to locate when wiki authors and editors make use of “tags.” Each wiki article can be “tagged” with keywords. When a user searches on any of the associated keywords, the article will appear in the search even if the term is not included in the article title or content of the page. For example, if you create an article on the Venn Diagram that does not include the term “Graphic Organizer” anywhere in the text, you can still tag the page with the keyword “Graphic Organizer” and when someone else searches the wiki for “graphic organizers” it will show in the search results.

Wikispaces, PBWorks, and WetPaint all use the term “tags” for this feature. However, on MediaWiki this is referred to as “categories” and the process for generating the tags or categories is a bit different because MediaWiki does not provide a field in the editing process. Instead, MediaWiki users create “categories” by entering the following text anywhere into the body of the article or page (usually at or near the bottom): category/NameOfCategory At this time, Google Sites does not offer a function for tagging pages, but the use of keywords within the text of each page created will bring those pages up in search even without tags.

= **Edit or Page Notes** =

Usually located just above or below the field for tags is another field for entering editing notes. This is a very helpful feature that you should always use when making edits to any page. These notes appear alongside the revision on the history page, and they make it very easy for other users to know instantly the nature of your edit to the page. Examples of notes include: “edited to remove vandalism,” “corrected typo,” “updated list of employees,” etc.

= **Links** =

All wiki pages allow editors to create a variety of links anywhere within the content of the page. The kinds of links that are possible include external links to any web page, email links to specific email addresses, links to uploaded content such as image files or documents, and internal links to other wiki pages. Internal links can even be created for pages that do not yet exist. After creating the link and saving the page, clicking on the link to the nonexistent page will trigger the creation of a new blank page that you can easily edit. This is a very handy feature when working on building content in your wiki.

Getting Started

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