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“It was never about the markup anyway. Wikis are about making creating and editing content trivial, about creating structure as you go, about tracking changes and activity (plus more). The “wiki way” never demanded the use of strangle little text commands.”
“It could even be argued that the wiki way is all about usability, so wiki markup is actually opposed to the core principles being pursued. What could be easier than just typing straight into the wiki, with buttons for formatting?”
and
“I would go one step further: don’t deploy a wiki for a broad audience (or within the enterprise) if it doesn’t have WYSIWYG editing. That will start to put some pressure on the developers, and should help to speed the permanent death of wiki markup. RIP and long live wikis.”
I fully agree with James here, although I must admit I have developed some kind of blindness: the longer you are working with wiki markup the easier it is to forget this big usability and adoption issue.
So, although my colleagues in the department have finally begun to do their stuff on our wiki (MediaWiki), I am sure adoption would have been much quicker had WYSIWYG editing been in place.
Before we start…
To start of this review I would like to point out first of all where am I coming from with this. I have about 3 years of practical MediaWiki experience as a user of my companies multiple wiki installations. Prior to reading the book I had little knowledge of the technical background of the software, although I am very interested in customising MediaWiki and writing special pages. I am a PHP newbie.
The book: look and feel
The book is printed in black-and-white (so no colour) and the quality of the print is very decent. The book is rather light (good thing for me commuting).
The book’s accessories
There is no CD delivered with the book, but all code snippets can be downloaded from the book support page at the publishers website.
What I learned from my interview with the author Mizanur Rahman, is that he is quite willing to answer additional questions via his weblog Boolean Dreams and that he is working on a dedicated wiki (haven’t found it to date).
The contents
Please find the names of the eleven chapters of the book (I was not able to find a linkable page of contents):
Overall conclusion
Although a comparison cannot be made, because of the lack of competition (discarding the online help at MediaWiki.org) the MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide is a good and must have reference for anyone working with MediaWiki as administrator but also as user, offering almost anything one would want to know to start off with, to maintain and to customise and even hack a wiki installation. For those wanting to go a bit further with writing real PHP code for creating extensions, custom wiki markup and special pages, the book offers some nice code examples to work with and to modify to one’s needs.
The book could have benefited from somewhat richer content, such as more references to additional sources on the Internet and especially something like break-out boxes presenting experiences from admins of major wiki real life implementations. Next to that it appears that some more time should have been spend on a better index, correcting language, typos and structuring in general.
Book rating: 8
To summarise: the pros and cons
Pros:
Almost everything you will need for a basic MediaWiki installation, its maintenance and some customisation is available in this book. It is a complete reference for admins but certainly also for users, that would like some basic understanding of MediaWiki.
Very nice and easy to grasp examples of skin customisation and creation (I am no PHP expert!).
Good example on creating an article rating system extension and accompanying special page. With this knowledge and some additional PHP you will be able to try out a couple of your extension idea’s quite easily I guess.
There is a nice bonus chapter (11) presenting 7 extensions and some support on how to install them.
A book is so much easier than an online source! Of course this is not a pro for this book per se, but for others as well.
Cons:
Missing 1: some practical case studies of real life MediaWiki implementations and preferably interviews with the admins of the practise of maintaining a wiki
Missing 2: More attention to anti-vandalism tools out there, dedicated to preventing rather than cleaning-up.
Missing 3: A good index: the index at the end of the book is way too brief to be of real value for someone trying to find something back in the book.
Missing 4: Too little in-text references and no references section in the book, for further reading or information, like most important forums for those looking for help (like the MediaWiki Mailing List Archive and MWusers.com).
Sometimes the English used suggests a lack of some decent editorial oversight (or shall I call it charming?)
Chapter 1, describing wiki’s in relation to weblogs, forums and CMS systems and the position in Web 2.0 is not really convincing. Furthermore, although alternative wiki systems are briefly mentioned, no real and “honest” comparison is made.
Images and tables are not numbered, which is not good for readability.
The typographical distinction between paragraph and sub-paragraph could have been better
Final words
If I find the time, I will e-mail all errors found to the publisher.
Disclaimer: I did not personally test all code in the book.
While waiting for the publication of the first book fully dedicated to MediaWiki, I came up with the idea of asking the author of the book, Mizanur Rahman, for an interview over e-mail. Not being able to find his e-mail address, I posted the question to his weblog to which he promptly reacted as being very happy to cooperate.
So here we are, only two weeks later, proud to present some more insight into the author’s background and of course the upcoming book MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide, to be published by the end of this month.
<interview>
Who is Mizanur Rahman? Can you please share us something about your age, where you live, how you were educated and your current profession?
I am Mizanur Rahman, a software engineer living in Bangladesh. I am 26 years old. I have completed my graduation in Computer Science from North South University. For last 7 years I have been working with different web technologies and it has been my core focus area since then. Currently I am working as a Senior Software Engineer at ReliSource Technologies (www.relisource.com), a USA based software outsourcing company.
Is “MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide” your first book or did you write others? Any other notable publications like in magazines? Also on the subject of MediaWiki?
“MediaWiki administrators’ tutorial guide” is my first book. I have been working with Packt Publishing as Technical reviewer for almost a year and half. I have reviewed two of their previous books and the books are vBulletin and Smarty. I am also a moderator of PHPXperts, largest PHP user group in Bangladesh. Other than Packt work I don’t have any other publication available at this moment.
How did you come up with the idea of writing this book on Mediawiki?
I was planning to write a book on different open source projects and during that time the idea of a book on MediaWiki came up. I have wiki experience for more than 2 years and David Barnes, Packt development editor was aware of it. So we started working on the book proposal. After that I wrote a detail outline of the content of the book and the target audience. Packt Publishing approved the outline and we started working on the MediaWiki book.
I personally think this book will fill an important void in the MediaWiki documentation, that a lot of people have been looking for quite some time. Good structured information is actually quite fragmented on the Internet. Considering that we are dealing with a wiki platform, meant in part to do documentation, this appears a bit contradictory. What are your thoughts about this?
Yes you are right. I tried to fill the gaps that we have in MediaWiki documentation and lack of structured resources online. When I started using MediaWiki I felt the necessity of a good tutorial or even a book to learn more about the wiki technology and MediaWiki detail. It is true that there is not a very well structured documentation or tutorial. But it is not that far yet. Wikimedia has already taken the steps to produce a more structured manual for MediaWiki. I believe it will be more structured this time.
Why a book about MediaWiki and not another wiki platform?
MediaWiki is the best wiki engine available. I have evaluated a few but so far MediaWiki looked best to me. If the world’s largest online resource (Wikipedia) runs on the same piece of software, it gives you the idea of stability of the software. Also MediaWiki is used by most wiki users, which other wiki’s do not have.
Was it hard to find a publisher?
Not really. Packt publishing loves to work with young and promising people. They publish books on new technologies especially open source projects and target a particular audience group. I am lucky that I got the opportunity to work with Packt and to write for them. They are all great people with unending enthusiasm for new technology.
How much experience do you have with MediaWiki? In terms of years of use, wiki implementations and dept of usage (like real development)?
I have more than 2 years of experience to work with wiki. I have used almost every available feature of wiki from simple editing to use of templates and writing hacks and extensions for myself.
Do you currently manage public or closed wiki’s?
No. Right now I don’t manage any public wiki. But I would like to start a public wiki very soon.
Do you use wiki’s in your work? Can you please explain for what kind of tasks?
I use wiki at my work to keep things together and structured. I am trying to promote wiki to people in my workplace so that they can have interest of using wiki as a media to communicate with others and content management system. My first target is to build a knowledgebase for our company using MediaWiki.
Are you or have you been involved in the development of MediaWiki software?
I have not been involved in official development of MediaWiki software. But I have built different extensions and hacks as freelancer developer. If opportunity arises I would love to get involved in the core development of MediaWiki.
Can you share some of your experiences with writing the book, in terms of duration of the project, choosing the concept (tutorial based on fun example) and the level of difficulty? Where there any though decisions to make on the content?
The total project took 9 months to finish. As I was very busy with my job, it took a little bit more time to finish the book than anticipated. The example wiki site we built on the book was a really fun to work with. The concept and the ideas to work around the examples were really enjoying. We built a “haunted wiki site” for ghost hunters and enthusiast all around the world. We showed how to publish new content and manage it and how to communicate with other users. The book is written for very beginners to advance level users. We kept the flow of the book such a way that a non wiki user can read the book and start working on the wiki site in no time at all. For advance level users we have kept hacking, customizing and maintenance wiki features. So it’s a complete book for all.
What were your main sources of information?
Wikipedia, official MediaWiki site and also searching different forums, blogs.
Did you use a wiki for writing the book, for example in cooperation with the technical editor?
No, I did not. Every one has their own working principle. Packt Publishing also has a defined format to write a book and all the communication such as comments, remarks, change requests, discussion are done according to their way. So I actually followed the standard procedure of Packt rather than having a new way of doing things.
Who reviewed or proof-read the book? Did you ask any of the current MediaWiki developers to review the book?
There were 2 technical reviewers for this book. Nikhil and Peter De Decker. Both of them supported me very well and I must thank them for their excellent work. I am not sure about the review request of the current MediaWiki developers for the book. I think we didn’t ask anyone of them.
Can we expect a special foreword/intro from Mr. Wikipedia Jimmy Wales or the prominent developer Brion Vibber?
No, we don’t have any special forward/intro from them for this version of the book.
Reading from the publisher’s introduction, the book appears to be offering quite a complete solution for the average MediaWiki administrator. Still, were there pieces of content you would have liked to add but, for some practical reason, could not? Do you feel you could write Part II?
Yes there is always a scope for part II but I don’t think it will be happening very soon. MediaWiki is coming with new features in every release and if we feel that the changes are getting really big then we might come up with the second version of the book. Let’s see how it goes in future. The missing bits and pieces in the book will be published on my blog and I will try to keep readers updated about the changes.
What is the concept / style of the book (is it a glossary/dictionary style or different, please explain)?
The book is narrative and example oriented. We tried to maintain the flow of the learning smooth as well as interesting so that readers are always on the content of the book.
Will the book describe a bunch of the extensions that are available today?
We have a separate chapter at the end of the book to discuss a few cool extensions available online.
And will it also teach the basics of writing a custom extension?
Yes it does. It also teaches how to write new skins.
Does the book come with some programming code? Is there a CD included?
Yes, the hacks and extensions of this book can be downloaded from the Packt site. We do not have any CD included with the book.
Will there be a complementary website, weblog or … a wiki?
Yes. Packt has the facility to download all the codes from their support site. Beside that my blog will be kept to help any wiki user. I will try to publish my wiki very soon.
Will you answer readers’ questions on your weblog?
I always welcome questions from everyone on my blog. I will definitely try to answer reader’s questions but I can not provide any assurance.
On what MediaWiki-version is the book based on?
We tried to keep it up-to-date and the book is focused on 1.9.0.
How many MediaWiki administrators are out there do you think?
This one is a very tricky question. There are thousands of public and private wiki site. I will not be surprised if there are few thousands MediaWiki administrators.
When will the book be published?
I think it’s around 25th March, 2007.
At the end I would like to thank you Marcel for this interview and also hope to hear readers about the book and about wiki technology. I would love to hear your comments about the book.
</interview>
Mizan, it has been a pleasure to work with you on this interview and I very much look forward to reading and reviewing your book and implementing the contents in my next wiki projects. I hope the book will be well received!
Somehow, I guess via Techmeme or so, I found out about a book that I find quite appealing and which I have just ordered.
Why is it so appealing? Well first of all: the term Wiki is in the title and I am very much into wiki’s. But that is obviously not really a convincing reason. No, what has struck me most about the book, was the presentation of it’s author to which I listened to in the train this week.
In more than 1 hour the author presented a very convincing and interesting picture of a couple of disruptive global trends with the common denominator mass collaboration to “harness knowledge and the capability to innovate and create value”.
If you want to learn more I advice you to check out the dedicated website at Wikinomics.com.
I am going to read the free first chapter of the book and than re-listen to that excellent presentation, while awaiting the delivery of the book.
By the way during the presentation the author of the book Don Tapscott mentions a video of a interesting panel discussion with four young adults at the World Congress on Information Technology 2006 (see page 8). According to Tapscott the panel offers an in dept insight into the technology preferences of the new generation entering the workplace soon.
It was a bit hard to find the presentation, but judging by the first 15 minute I seems very worthwhile: the video
Finally, Tapscott has an interesting presentation on what he calls the Net-generation. I particularly like the slide below which provides an insight with what kind of ethics the Net-genaration will enter the workplace:
Mediawiki is the open source software backbone of Wikipedia and a very popular choice for many other wiki’s as well.
Mid March I plan to be reviewing the book here, which I very much look forward to considering a few wiki initiatives I have in mind. Having an up-to-date dedicated book is so much better that trying to surf you way though often fragmented information on the Internet. And of course, I can read a book on the train!
A brief overview of what to expect:
Installing MediaWiki and getting started quickly
Using special pages and domains
Running multiple wikis from a single installation
Incorporating images, multimedia, and advanced formatting
Structuring your wiki from the start for easy navigation as it grows
Managing users and protecting pages from vandalism
Socialtext has integrated it’s open sourced wiki into the upcoming Sharepoint 2007, in order to create the best-of-breed wiki, considering some shortcomings in the upcoming Sharepoint’s own wiki.
Read the full story on Ross Mayfield’s weblog. As always, Ross provides a very thoughtful story on the rational for this Socialtext / Microsoft co-operation, and it’s not (only) about the money…
Essentially it is collaborative writing exercise (using a wiki of course!) with as main purpose to write a “network book” on the Use of Communities by businesses. To quote from the website:
We Are Smarter Than Me has been formed to prove that the community can write a compelling book better than individual experts…
addressing a crucial shift in how businesses operate as they learn to leverage the power of “community.”
The central premise of We Are Smarter Than Me is that large groups of people (“We”) can, and should, take responsibility for traditional business functions that are currently performed by companies, industries and experts (“Me”).
The whole writing process is supported by a community itself using a discussion forum and the royalties of the final book being sold will go to charities.
Of course, I could not resist to enlist as a participant, to closely follow this experiment and to see whether I can contribute some of my own experience.
As a bonus: a prediction tool
There is even a prediction tool where you are able to trade on 4 questions:
Will there be at least 10,000 registered community members by March 31, 2007?
Will more than 20% of the registered members* participate as book authors? (*based on the number of registered members on the date the book is published)
Will the book break into Amazon’s Top 1000 by December 31, 2007?
Will the volume of book sales exceed 50,000 copies by December 31, 2007?
The goal of this tool is to see if the community will accurately determine the veracity of these 4 predictions. All very nice, especially since I had become very interested in experimenting with such a tool in a company environment.
There may however be an issue with the market already, as the current “prices” suggest an almost 100% “yes” outcome for the questions. Earning money now would need some serious short position (which is possible!). Maybe the questions would need to be more ambitious?
In an experiment in collaborative journalism, Wired News is putting reporter Ryan Singel at your service.
This wiki began as an unedited 1,059-word article on the wiki phenomenon, exactly as Ryan filed it. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to do the job of a Wired News editor and whip it into shape. Don’t change the quotes, but feel free to reorganize it, make cuts, smooth the prose or add links—whatever it takes to make it a lively, engaging news piece.
Ryan will answer questions from the comments page, and, when consensus calls for it, conduct additional reporting. If there’s something he missed, let him know, and he’ll get on the phone and investigate, then submit new text to the wiki for your review.
Readers can also submit headlines for the story, and write and edit the “deck”—a blurb for our front page and RSS feed that promotes the article.
We’ll release the results under a Creative Commons license, and, if the whole thing doesn’t turn into a disaster, run the final story on Wired News on Sept. 7, 2006.
So the idea is, that in one big collaboration effort the best article on the use of wiki’s is being written. It will be very worthwhile to check this out the coming week.
All content on this weblog is presented on my personal account, representing my own views, and as such does not necessarily reflect the views of my past, current or future employers.
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Comment [7] | 
posted Feb 20, 10:28 pm on Feb 20, 2008 |
category: Wiki
/ Enterprise 2.0
While waiting for the publication of the first book fully dedicated to 
Do you currently manage public or closed wiki’s?
Somehow, I guess via 
Just when I started to read 
Via