Semantics in Wiki - Community-Built Databases: Research and Development - page 238

content itself, can be edited. It can incorporate sounds, movies and pictures. AWiki
can be used as a simple tool to create multimedia presentations and simple digital
stories. Wiki content - contributed “on the fly” by subject-matter specialists - can
be immediately (and widely) viewed and commented on.
Matias [ 5 ] argues that Wikis can be thought of as simple interfaces to a hypertext
database for keeping track of notes and interlinked information. According to
Matias [ 5 ], there are several advantages of using Wiki, one of which includes
giving an opportunity for users with different types of knowledge, confidence and
communication skills to contribute equally to a joint publication, reducing e-mail
traffic. Collaborators who lack confidence to argue a case in a “live” face-to-face
debate can feel more comfortable making the same points in a Wiki environment
where the pace of discussion is slower and the quality of the thinking is more
significant than force of personality. Wikis work well for keeping track of notes and
interlinked information. In addition, Wikis have the following advantages [ 5 ]:
l They simplify the editing of a Website
l They use simple markup
l They record document histories
l Creating links is simple with Wikis
l Creating new pages is simple with Wikis
l Wikis simplify site organisation
l Wikis keep track of all material
l Many Wikis are collaborative communities
l Wikis encourage good hypertext
TWiki [ 6 ] is a flexible, powerful and easy-to-use enterprise Wiki, enterprise
collaboration platform and Web application platform. It is a Structured Wiki,
typically used to run a project development space, a document management system,
a knowledge base or any other groupware tool on an intranet, extranet or the
Internet. The applications can be implemented by users who have no programming
skills. Developers can extend the functionality of TWiki with Plugins. TWiki
fosters information flow within an organisation, allows distributed teams to work
together seamlessly and productively and eliminates the one-Webmaster syndrome
of outdated intranet content. TWiki is developed by an active open-source commu-
nity on twiki.org. TWiki is used internally to manage documentation and project
planning of Yahoo products.
TWiki is a mature, full-featured Web-based collaboration system [ 6 ]:
l Any Web browser can be used to edit existing pages or create new pages. There
is no need for ftp or http to upload pages.
l Edit link: To edit a page, simply click on the Edit link at the bottom of every
page.
l Auto links: Web pages are linked automatically. One does not need to learn
HTML commands to link pages.
l Text formatting: Simple, powerful and easy to learn text formatting rules.
Basically, the user writes text like she or he would write an e-mail.