What is a wiki?

This page is part of a wiki - an area conducive to collaborative content development. Wikis are designed to simplify web page writing and interlinking, typically using textual "gestures" to denote references between wiki pages or text markup like emphasis, table layout, and so forth.

• The wikipedia description has lots more info about wiki's general background.

• There are many wiki implementations. This site runs Zwiki. It includes unusual features like subscriptions for email notifications about page changes, automatic organization of pages in outline-like hierarchies, file and image uploads, and more. See the Zwiki help page for more details.

Navigation

Each page in a wiki has a unique name, most often a WikiName - two or more capitalized words joined together. Free-form names, which can be any word or phrase, can also be used. A page name automatically links to that page.

Certain pages or links provide special functions such as an overview of the wiki ("contents") or list of recently-changed pages ("changes"). Or, you can use convenient access keys to navigate.

Click "backlinks" or the page title to see the list of pages which link to this one.

Page hierarchy

Zwiki arranges pages in a hierarchy (outline), to helps maintain some organization as the number of pages gets large. You can always see the overall wiki outline by clicking "contents". You can:

• visit the backlinks screen to reparent the current page (relocate it in the hierarchy)
• after you have configured a user name, you can also use the page management form at the bottom of the screen to reparent, rename and delete pages.

If enabled by the site admin, you'll also see hierarchy navigation links (next/previous/up) and a list of subtopics on each page.

Subscription

If you see a "subscribe" link, you can subscribe to receive comments and change notifications by email. You can choose to receive comments just from that page or from the whole wiki.

1. Click "subscribe"
2. If needed, enter your email address and click "Change"
3. Click the button to toggle your page or wiki subscription status (green means you are subscribed).

If configured by the site admin, subscribers can send comments by mail. Just reply to a comment, or send mail to the wiki's mail-in address. Your mail will go to the page named in brackets in the subject (or to a default page).

Editing

People with site membership have full editing rights to any page. Note your comments may be received by many subscribers. To avoid this, please use Sand Box for test comments. Tips:

• Add a comment using the form at the bottom of the page
• Click "edit" to change the page's text. You can rename the page, upload a file, or choose other options here.
• When you write a page name in wiki text, it automatically forms a link to that page (free-form names must be enclosed in double square brackets). If that page does not yet exist, a "?" question-mark link will appear; click the "?" question-mark when you are ready to create it
• There are best practices for wiki editing which you'll get to know over time.

Formatting rules

When you save a page, Zwiki formats and links your text according to some standard rules. Different rules are applied depending on the page type; they are described at the Zwiki text formatting rules page. The default in this wiki is reStructuredText - there's a quick reference for it at http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/rst/quickref.html.

Finding out more

More about Zwiki: http://zwiki.org , ZWiki:WhatIsZwiki , ZWiki:ZWiki , ZWiki:FAQs

More about wiki in general: WikiWikiWeb:FrontPage , WikiWikiWeb:EvolutionOfaWikizen