Welcome to wikis
Wikis are collections of pages about a particular subject. Wiki members can edit or comment on the pages, or add their own pages. Teams can use wikis to create a central place to collaborate on a project.Typically someone creates a wiki, gives it a title, adds initial members, and adds a description and some tags. On the first page in the wiki, they provide information about the subject, and then they tell the members that it is available. Depending on their access, members can read the wiki, edit pages, comment on pages, and add their own pages.
An example might be a wiki about birds. The wiki creator titles the wiki "Birds of the United States," provides a description, and makes like-minded people members, giving them access to create new pages and edit existing pages.
The creator then edits the first page and provides some introductory information, including a welcome, an explanation of the subject, and instructions on getting started and where to find help.
Now let's assume that the creator has a particular interest in birds of the southwest United States. She could then create a child page below the welcome page titled "Southwest." Then she could create child pages for each type of southwestern U.S. bird.
As she is building the "Southwest" section of the wiki, other members have started looking at it. One member creates a peer page next to the "Southwest" page called "Northeast" and begins adding pages about Northeast birds. The hierarchy of pages now looks like this:
Birds of the United States Southwest California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) Northeast Orchard Oriole (Icterus spurius)Other members begin editing existing pages, adding comments, and adding their own pages. Within a few months the wiki is robust and full of information, and finding information about a particular bird is no longer as simple as glancing at the hierarchy. Users interested in a particular bird can search on the bird's name, or look for that bird's name as a tag, or find the name in the page index.
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Wikis overviews, how-tos, and FAQs
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