The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web

This book describes the technology and culture of the wiki open web authoring system. The CD-ROM contains all the necessary software to install a wiki and one third of the book explains how the software does it's magic and how it might be expanded to do even more. The first part contains a step-by-step introduction to the wiki ideas and culture and the last part tells about the wiki experiences in the corporate world and at universities. The book is written extremely well and easy to follow, sometimes even entertaining. It touches all important aspects of installing and maintaining a wiki server and of running a wiki community. During the last 8 months I did many of the things described based on my own explorations and using a different software. This books would have saved me many weeks of labour. I may lack objectivity, but this book is bound to become the bible for the wiki world. What's to criticize? First: there is almost no hype in this book, too little for the lots of enthusiastic users out there. Second: the book offers a baseline system, some clones and lots of optional extensions and invites to experiment. I think that most readers would prefer a full-featured proven standard system out of the box. Third: it's conservative approach about some features - like edit conflict resolution or page deletion - shows how quickly things are moving. Is this criticism correct? I don't know, you decide. To me, it's an excellent book. It's the important, long awaited reference. It's the landmark showing that the wiki is about to change from an insider tip to an established technology. It clearly deserves 5 (*****) stars. If you are interested in wiki, online communities or knowledge management at all, you must know this book.

This is the first major book on the use of wikis. Ward Cunningham is the inventor of the Wiki, he created WikiWikiWeb, which is the first wiki website software. This book is about how to install/customize/manage a wiki system and then an opinion on the nature of wiki-style online communication. The online encyclopedia project Wikipedia is the most popular wiki-based website. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software WikiWikiWeb and the author of this book, initially described Wiki as the simplest online database that could work. "Wiki" is a kind of hypertext publication, which is edited and managed by its audience directly using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages specific to the subject or scope of the project. It can be open to the public, or it can be used only within the organization to maintain its internal knowledge base. "Wiki" is Hawaiian, which means "quick". The author describes the essence of the Wiki concept in this book. In short, the wiki concept can be expressed as follows. Wiki invites all users (not just experts) to edit any page or create a new page in the wiki site, using only standard web browsers without any add-ons. Wiki promotes meaningful thematic associations between different pages by intuitively and easily creating page links and displaying whether the expected target page exists. Wiki is not a site carefully crafted by experts and professional writers and designed for casual visitors. Instead, it tries to involve typical visitors/users in the creation and collaboration that constantly changes the landscape of the webiste in an ongoing process. This is the concept presented by the authors of the book. Since Ward Cunningham was a pioneer of the wiki concept, this book is worth reading from a historical perspective. For example, you will see Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in Portland, Oregon, in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembers the Honolulu International Airport counter staff telling him to take the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" bus that runs between the airport terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alternative to "quick" alliteration to avoid naming this thing quick-web." Therefore, if you are interested in history, please read this book. This book may also be interesting for system administrators and managers who are willing to embrace the spirit of Wiki.

WikiWiki has changed my life. It's not only the first-hand influence that I can organize my ideas more efficiently and effectively, but it also has changed the way I look at technology, society, and human collaboration as a whole. Though this book is specifically designed to give a good explanation of Wiki, seen generally, it's much more than that: it is about knowledge management. You'll benefit enormously from this book if you are anyhow involved in Knowledge Management, even if you are not going to use Wiki in your setting. The virtue of this book is that it's in DocumentMode so that the reader can grab the essence of the essences of a few millions of man-hour experiences in a few ticks of the clock; I even feel jealous of the readers who'll read this book as their starting point -- I had to experiment and trial-and-error for several months to get the real meaning of it and WikiMaster Mind. Thank you, Ward Cunningham for writing this wonderful book, and creating wonderful Wiki-Way.

I was hoping for a lot of examples, hints, and tricks on how to create and format a wiki. While the book gave some hints on formatting, this book is more for someone who is administering a wiki site and not a regular user. If you just want tips and techniques on creating a personal or work wiki article, you can get more help from the wikipedia on the internet and you'll save some money too.

WIKIPEDIAに触れてみて、この本を読む。そうすればWikiの思想の偉大さに感嘆する。そう、この書籍はWikiシステムの基本的な動作原理を解説しているものだが、著者の一貫したアーキテクチャに関する考え方が読み取れる。これはアーキテクチャと共同執筆に関する著者からの強いメッセージだ。間違いなく名著である。翻訳もすばらしい。このレビューを読んでいる暇があれば、本書を読むべきだ。

Good book

技術的な部分はもうかなり時間がたっているので、実情に合わなくなっている部分もあるが、Wikiの導入方法や、大学・職場などで導入してみてどうなったかなど、成功事例のみではなく失敗した際の要因についての考察もあり、参考になるところが多い。 インストールやハックなどより、実際の活用ノウハウを紹介してくれる本がもっと出てくれるとよいなぁと思ってます。 あ、私はPukiWikiを使ってます。

Wikiを語る上でこの本を外すわけにはいかない、というか、今んところこのWikiの本といえばこれしか見当たらない。だから今はこの本を読むしかないのではあるが、今後もこの本だけでよいんじゃないかと思うくらい、Wikiに関するほとんどが網羅されている。Wikiについて知りたいなら、まずコレ。読むべし。 残念なのは、Wikiのインストール方法までも網羅しているがために「技術本」として分類され、本当にWikiを必要としている場所に届きにくいという点だ。 本当に必要としている場所というのは、「じょーほーきょーゆー」だの「なれっじまねーじめんと」だの、意味もよく分からず連呼している"オエライサン"たちの居る場所のこと。願わくば、「III.可能性の想像」を別冊子にして、これを読め！とばかりに彼らに配ってやりたい。本当に。 「本物のコラボレーションツール」を探しているのならば、是非とも読むべき本である。よくある「見当違いの反論」をいとも簡単に蹴散らしてくれるぞ。