Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
On the performance front, MediaWiki has been designed from the fi rst to
be quick and responsive and its authors have built in many routines, such
as aggressive caching, to ensure sustained high performance.
Another key facet of the scalability of MediaWiki is that it has been
designed to be easily extended and as a result there are a large number of
extensions that can also be freely downloaded from the MediaWiki.org
site to expand how it can be used even further. Indeed, a single instance
of MediaWiki can take the place of an untold number of individually
coded applications that would naturally exist within any organisation,
for example see Table 13.2. Note that MediaWiki can be taken to another
level of sophistication altogether with the introduction of the Semantic
MediaWiki family of extensions and this is covered in detail elsewhere in
this topic (see Chapters 16 and 17).
Classifying some of the most common uses of
MediaWiki within the research organisation
Table 13.2
Application of MediaWiki
Description
Sharing knowledge
One of the most high value uses of MediaWiki
within a research organisation is as a way of
sharing knowledge derived from various
projects. A 'one-stop shop' MediaWiki page on
a specifi c subject that multiple authors from
across an organisation contribute to can be a
very powerful tool
Help and how-to pages
Ease of authoring and cross-referencing content
means capturing how-to and help guides are a
popular use of MediaWiki. For instance, on the
check out the Wired How-To Wiki [21] or the
Open Wetware Wiki [22]
Lessons learnt/best
practices
The low cost of MediaWiki as an application and
its complete openness makes it a perfect place
to store lessons learnt for future reference
Catalogues
A single MediaWiki instance within an
organisation is an excellent place to investigate
what someone is working on or the service a
group can provide. The power comes from being
able to access related content, e.g. the
'Innovation' page links to a generic topic of
'Social Problem Solving', which in turn leads to
a tool available within the organisation that
provides a solution for this need
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