I've been trying to bring the most relevant information on the usage of this Wiki into a brief form. The Wiki manuals will give you more detailed Information. Links to the specific sections are also provided. If there are more urgent questions of which you think they might be helpful if answered here, don't hesitate and note them down in the grey box below. If you know the answer yourself, just add a section, and make the information available for your colleagues.
What is a Wiki?
A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The Pages within a Wiki can and should be linked to other relevant pages within and/or outside the Wiki. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and Knowledge Management systems. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work".
"Wiki" is a Hawaiian word for "fast". "Wiki" can be expanded as"What I Know Is..." but this is a backronym.
See also : What is a Wiki
Why should I use this?
The intention is to replace long monolithic documents by small -linked- information units . This makes it easier to navigate through large documents and find wanted information and further information.
Editing an article within a wiki is easy. This allows the wiki-users to keep information up to date, to correct articles published by other users or to add more relevant information to it by adding text or linking an other relevant article, or explanation.
E.g.: It is not necessary to explain in detail what options and strategies there are in solar cooking in different documents if it has been defined once and is now linked to the text. This prevents redundancy and allows users to concentrate on the topic ore to gain more surrounding information - as he or she likes.
If a page with specific content is linked to several pages, and the specific content is one that changes over time, the information must only be updated in one single document instead of all documents where it occurs. So if there were new technologies in solar cooking they could just be added to the document that already exists and the information would be available from all the documents that it is linked to.
More reasons for using wikis arise from the needs of knowledge- and project- management.
Besides storing and providing information a Wiki can be used as a tool for knowledge generation and allocation as well as a project planning tool. It also makes it possible for external personnel to access this information and see how the project proceeds. See also the short article project Wiki.
