Recently in Tool Category

I've been writing about wikis and related topics, so it's time for a collective entry. I've got a wiki definition in the glossary (the first topic herein), but there's more to be said. This is the wiki tool entry, an entry in the t.org directory for wikis en masse as a tool. It will probably collect more subtopics as I write more about wikis later. For now, it's worth relating an email discussion with Ken Tompkins about wikis in the classroom.

I've just installed DokuWiki at work, and I have to say that I am nothing but thrilled with my first real wiki-founding. Warning: the rest of this entry is almost entirely positive... fanboy-ness ahead, even if it is followed by actual discussion of wiki social issues.

Beyond the cut: Full discussion of Dokuwiki and enthusiasm about wikis in general.

Created by Andries van Dam and Ted Nelson and undergraduate programmers at Brown University in ... 1967?

Apparently, though the authors didn't know it, IBM sold it to the Apollo mission team to produce documentation that went up with the Apollo flights.

Featured:

• arbitrary-length strings (rather than fixed-length lines)
• edits with arbitrary-length scope
• unidirectional branches automatically arranged in menus
• splices that were branches inviible to online users but traversible by the printer
• text instances (references rather than inclusion)
• edits performed through pointer rather than character manipulation

According to van Dam, it quickly presented the "lost in hyperspace" problem.