Wiki and online collaboration tools
Presented at the Trollparty
January 26th, 2006
World Social Forum, Caracas.
Marc Laporte, Canada
Luis Fagundes, Brazil
What is collaboration?
- The attendance explains what collaboration is.
- A bit of history
- What do people in the attendance use?
What is a wiki?
- A website where users can easily become contributors.
- Ward Cunningham (cache) implemented the WikiWikiWeb (cache) original in 1995.
- There are hundreds of wiki software available
- Features of a classic wiki
- Many editors via a Web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc)
- Wiki Syntax including page creation via WikiWords
- History of versions: An exemple. We know who changed what & when
Wiki Syntax
Permits us to format text without using html
(There are many different syntaxes)
Features of modern wikis
- Categories and structures to avoid "Wiki chaos"
- Authentication & permissions
- Each page can have distinct permissions
- Easy to change the look & feel (style)
- Adding files (.doc, .pdf)
- Images (and even online editing via applet Jgraphpad ou Jhotdraw)
- Watch a page (notification by email)
- Local cache of external links
- Spreadsheet (ex: TikiSheet)
- Presentations/slides (like this one)
- Search engines
- Many plugins
- etc
Wikipedia
Wikipedia: Wiki + Encyclopedia
La enciclopedia libre
http://wikipedia.org/ (cache)
- Started in 2001.
- 1 600 000+ articles in many languages
- 88 000+ artículos en espanol
- Probably the biggest wiki in the World.
Who uses a Wiki?
- Non-profits
- Associations
- Government ministries
- Companies
- etc
Why is it efficient?
Everyone on the same page!
"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" -Eric Raymond (The Cathedral & the Bazaar)
"Nobody knows everything, but everyone knows something".
Pierre Lévy (cache) (Intelligence collective)
The network effect
 | The network effect (cache) causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer dependent on the number of customers already owning that good or using that service. This is particularly true for Wikipedia. | |
Wiki compared to:
- Email
- Discussion Forums
- Mailing Lists
- Blogs
- Chat
Current communication problems
Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing?
I don't know what I don't know
In a community / group / association, we can sometimes ask ourselves:
- Who has the file for the event we organized last year?
- How can we teach a new member the state of different projects?
- How do I know if someone is already working on a similar project?
- What do we do when someone is on vacation and some important files are on his computer?
Success & Failure
Are you thinking of setting up a wiki?
- Dispersed team (geographically and time zones)
- Culture of Information Sharing
- A facilitator
- Ontology / structure / "refactoring"
What should be in a wiki?
- Documentation
- Procedures, etc
A habit: Every time you send an email: Ask yourself: Will someone need this information, now or in the future? (Email doesn't scale)
Wiki for project management
- Problème avec logiciels de gestion de projets
- données incomplètes (les gens s'en servent-ils?)
- que faire avec les tâches "permanentes"?
Gestion de projet "soft"
- Chaque projet a une page avec qui fait quoi pour quand.
- Les personnes concernées sont avisées par courriel lors de modifications
- Système de ticket (tracker) si grand nombre de tâches définies (bogue, appels, etc)
Tiki Wiki/CMS/Groupware
Sources
Questions?
http://www.tikiwiki.org/
marclaporte@php.net
freenode #tikiwiki
