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Wiki is a community on a shoestring: quick and easy to implement, easy to maintain, informal in tone, and thus totally open. Then again, perhaps just too open and chaotic for some people and some situations - it is an acquired taste, to be sure.
Despite the steadily-increasing number of wikis on the Web and the wide array of freely available implementations (the WikiEngines page at the Portland Pattern Repository, located online at www.c2.com/cgi/wiki, lists over 80 engines written in more than two dozen programming languages), wikis have largely managed to escape the sort of media and press attention that's been lavished on their personal web publishing cousins, weblogs. Of late, however, they're enjoying a somewhat higher profile, as demonstrated by the recent publication in the New York Times of an article on wikis, focusing on their use within the enterprise ("Business Is Toying With a Web Tool", May 19th, 2003).
Whether or not they fit the "quirky software technology" mold ascribed to them by the writer of the Times piece, there's something undeniably cool about the Wiki concept of open collaborative Web authoring through browser text fields. As an occasional wiki user and developer interested in incorporating some Wiki-like functionality into a site management tool that I'd been using, I was looking forward to reading The Wiki Way, the only book on the subject of Wiki.
Before discussing the contents of TWW, it seems appropriate to address the question of authorship. Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham, originator of the Wiki concept and creator of the first wiki, are listed as coauthors, but Leuf seems to be the primary author by a wide margin. Cunningham's contribution to the book appears to consist primarily of the source for the QuickiWiki Wiki clone used for illustrative purposes throughout the text and included on the bundled CD-ROM (in addition to the full source for a number of other clones). Additionally, quotes attributed to Cunningham appear here and there throughout the book, as when (in Chapter 10, "Insights and Other Voices") Leuf cites him on the question of whether the practice of locking pages against further editing is in keeping with the nature of Wiki: "Why have a locked wiki when you can instead just post static Web pages?".
The Wiki Way is divided into three sections: "From Concepts to Using Wiki" (chapters 1 - 5: introduction to Wiki, installation of the QuickiWiki, and advice on use), "Understanding the Hacks" (chapters 6-9: tips and tricks for modifying and administering your wiki), and "Imagine the Possibilities" (chapters 10-12: mostly case studies). Three appendices composed respectively of tables describing differences in text formatting syntax between Wiki implementations, a combined annotated bibliography and collection of links, and a list of all of the 390 tips (nuggets of distilled advice set apart from the body text by bolded titles and shaded bounding boxes) sprinkled liberally throughout the text round out the book.
The first chapter, "Intro to Discussion and Collaboration Servers", is a poor beginning for an otherwise excellent book. I actually set TWW aside for several days after stalling here. In what Leuf himself admits could possibly have made a better appendix than an opening chapter, he measures Wiki against other modes of online discussion and collaboration, placing it under the heading of "interactive content update/access" in a three-way comparison with E-mail and shared folder/file access. Of the selling points of tools that fall within this category (aside from Wiki, only Zope is mentioned explicitly at this juncture) that the author identifies in a section titled "Features of Web-based Collaboration", some could just as easily be attributed to either or both E-mail and shared folder/file access: "Free Accessibility of the material", "Up-to-date versions", and even "Hyperlinking" - to the extent that many mail clients automatically hotlink strings beginning with http:// (as well as ftp://, nntp://, etc.). Take the author's advice to impatient readers and skip the first chapter entirely.
The meat of the book begins with the second chapter, "What's a 'Wiki'?", which opens with the obligatory notes regarding the etymology of the term "Wiki" (from the Hawaiian word "Wikiwiki", meaning fast or hurry) and the proper usage of "Wiki" versus "wiki" (the former referring to the concept and the latter to particular implementations or instances). Next, Leuf sketches a user's-eye view of their first encounter with a Wiki to introduce Wiki-isms like the "sandbox" and impart some navigation tips. Later, various wiki clones are discussed and Wiki is compared to other online collaborative tools (message boards, guestbooks, mailing list archives, chat rooms, etc.).
The remaining chapters in this first part of the book walk the reader through the installation of the QuickiWiki software included on the bundled CD-ROM, go into more detail on the mechanics of writing in wikis, and guide the newly-minted wiki user towards an understanding of the different styles of Wiki structure. Attention is paid to the manner in which characteristic Wiki features like the Recent Changes list can reinforce or weaken different types of structure and steps that authors can take in attempting to foster a particular structural pattern in their wikis.
The chapters comprising the next third of the book, "Understanding the Hacks", invite the reader to examine and modify their wiki source. Each tweak or hack is accompanied by one or more fragments of Perl (both Ward Cunningham's original wiki server and QuickiWiki are Perl applications) that suggest how a given modification to QuickiWiki might be accomplished. Wikis are eminently customizable and this portion of the book is a jumping-off point for anyone interested in wiki mods.
Of the final three chapters of The Wiki Way, grouped together under the heading of "Imagine the Possibilities", two consist of wiki usage case studies - of Swiki at the Georgia Institute of Technology and of various other wiki clones within business. As the author informs readers at the outset of the first chapter, "Insights and Other Voices", which concerns Wiki culture and the issues confronting openly editable public wikis, much of the material therein represents "experiences and reflections taken from the rich backdrop of wiki usage". The contents of sections like "Why Wiki Works" and "When Wiki Doesn't Work", for example, have been culled from the WhyWikiWorks and WhyWikiWorksNot pages, respectively, at Ward Cunningham's PPR wiki.
With the exception of Fisher and Lueg's From Usenet to CoWebs, which includes a single chapter by Andreas Dieberger and Mark Guzdial on the Georgia Tech CoWeb/Swiki, The Wiki Way is presently the only Wiki-centric text on the market. While this alone would almost certainly qualify the book as a must-have for anyone looking to create a new Wiki clone or include some Wiki-like functionality in their applications (recent years have seen the appearance of many weblog-wiki hybrids, for example), The Wiki Way (with the exception of the first chapter) happens to be an excellent introduction to all facets of Wiki and is eminently readable to boot. I hope that the same "social software" sensation that's contributed to Wiki's higher profile of late helps this book to find a wider audience.
-- Brian Donovan (brian@monokromatik.com)
Part I From Concepts to Using Wiki
1 Introduction to Discussion and Collaboration Servers
2 What's a "Wiki"?
3 Installing Wiki
4 Using Wiki
5 Structuring Wiki Content
Part II Understanding the Hacks
6 Customizing Your Wiki
7 Wiki COmponents Examined
8 Alternatives and Extensions
9 Wiki Administration and Tools
Part III Imagine the Possibilities
10 Insights and Other Voices
11 Wiki Goes Edu
12 WIki at Work
Appendix A Syntax Comparisons
Appendix B Wiki Resources
Appendix C List of Tips
Index
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