Wiki Web Collaboration

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Author(s): Anja Ebersbach, Markus Glaser, Richard Heigl

Review

Wiki Web Collaboration was originally written and published in Germany in 2005. In the English translation published in the USA in 2006, there are 383 pages and a CD-ROM. I read this book because I am very excited about the wiki way of working and collaborating, and I wanted to read everything I could on the topic of wikis and the TWiki software. The first 143 pages (of 383 pages) are devoted to a brief history of wikis, a high level discussion of how they are used, and a lengthy set of chapters on Media Wiki. Since I am not interested in Media Wiki, I skipped most of the first 100 pages of the first 143.

In the middle of the book we get to the good stuff -- TWiki, the Jack of all Trades. There are some very specific commands related to installation and administration of the TWiki software. It was interesting from a historical perspective. The examples from the book are from the September 2004 version of the software and that is version 3 for TWiki. My experience is all from version 4 and that was a major release for TWiki. Therefore, while lots of things are similar, the development of the technology means that large portions of the book are no longer the way it is. That's not all bad because history has its value. However, the detailed commands and step by step instructions that have been provided are no longer relevant.

The book is a curious balance between the technology and the functionality of TWiki. For example, there is an incredibily sophisticated discussion about searching with regular expressions (powerful but very technical) that is followed by a discussion of how to use TWiki for project management activities. I think the book must be treated as an historical reference work, where the reader only accesses the topics that are interesting from the reader's perspective.

The table of contents of Wiki Web Collaboration has the following major sections:

• The Wiki Concept
• Our First Wiki
  • The Installation
  • First Steps
  • The Core Functions of Media Wiki
  • Formatting
  • Multi-Page Structures
  • Components: the Function Pages
  • Administration
  • Life in Media Wiki
• TWiki, the Jack of all Trades
  • Installing TWiki
  • Working with TWiki
  • Formatting in TWiki
  • Searching in TWiki
  • User Permissions in TWiki
  • Administering TWiki
  • Designing a TWiki
• TWiki as a Project Kit
  • Preliminary Thoughts
  • Conceptual Phase: Collecting Ideas and Outlining the Project
  • Composing the Project Plan
  • Preparing for Your Event
  • Executing and Documenting an Event
• Tools with a Future
  • Technical and Social Outlook with Wikis
• Appendix A Installations in TWiki
• Glossary
• Bibilography

(Reviewed by: JimCrum)

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