What is wiki? Here’s a rather inflatedly philosophical definition. Like most intarweb systems that capture the imagination (e.g. blogs), people get a little effusive about wiki and the wonders of wiki “community” (c.f. blogosphere).
At the end of the day, all a basic wiki is is an easy way for any number of people to construct a set of hyperlinked documents, AKA a website. Done well, wiki is a pretty cool idea. It is not, however, a panacea or omni-tool. Other tools, such as VoodooPad, are what’s known as desktop wikis, normally standalone programs that are edited on the user’s computer rather than via a website. The common theme is ease of content creation, whether collectively or individually.
DIY
Coding my own wiki-alike featureset for this site was appealing, rather than using some open-source package as a starting point. Although I did (and continue to) experiment with the various downloadable packages, most had either too much power or not quite enough for what I wanted to do. I wound up beginning to roll my own, Notanda. More recently, I’ve moved over to using the open-source Drupal system.
However, I’m still hosting wikis, including the MediaWiki-based GaidhligWiki, which is becoming a hub for localizing various open-source applications into Gaidhlig (Scots Gaelic).
When I began working with MediaWiki on a few sites, I decided to see how easy it was to get running on Mac OS X. Downloaded the software, read the README and INSTALL files… and had it running perfectly well a couple minutes later. Now that wasn’t so bad. :)
The Tao of Mac has some good wiki+journal related ideas, which inspired quite a bit of the last version of this site.
Productivity, GTD, and Wiki
Chris Metcalf has put together a version of PHPWiki geared towards GTD, called (appropriately) Gtd Wiki. He has a demo set up.
Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders empire ;) grew with wiki.43folders.com.
Do you have the time?
Around here, we (mostly) subscribe to the idea that Wiki Pages Exist Outside of Time. During the development of Notanda, and again with the current site, a distinction is made between “timeless” articles and “timely” journal entries.
Interesting wikis and wiki-related stuff
- Freeciv wiki
- Homestar Runner wiki
- Instiki - “instant” Ruby-based personal wiki
- PHPWiki
- VoodooPad
- Wikipedia.org
- WikiWeblogPIM
- WikiWikiWeb - the originator
- Wikka Wakka Wiki
