KM Tool - Wiki

Wikis are tools that allow for collaborative editing and publishing and hence the creation of user generated content. Wikis are another example of social software - software that encourages people to work together.

Wikis are a useful tool when you want people to collaborate and work together on creating a common document, e.g. a project document, a manual, and so on or to work on a common strategy or event, e.g. a conference programme.

In corporate and general use they can be used to create collaborative documents, manuals e.g. WikiHow (a collaborative Manual)

The most obvious and famous example of a wiki is of course Wikipedia, which is an encyclopaedia that has been created by thousands of individuals. Every page in Wikipedia can be edited, which means it is constantly evolving and growing and can be kept up to date.

In the commercial tools market there are a number of enterprise wiki tools available, for example, e.g. Confluence

But there are also a number of free tools, for example:

* MediaWiki is the software used for Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia Foundation websites. Compared to other wikis, it has an excellent range of features and support for high-traffic websites using multiple servers (Wikipedia peaks in the 2500+ requests per second range as of June 2005).
* pbWiki is another hosted service and allows you to set up a wiki very quickly, as are Wikispaces and Wetpaint
* If you are looking for a personal, notepad-type wiki to download onto your own computer, then TiddlyWiki is a useful tool

Reference list

Mediawiki Installation & File Upload HowTO
http://www.washington.edu/computing/web/publishing/mediawiki.html

MediaWiki Comparison Matrix
http://www.wikimatrix.org/show/MediaWiki

How to install PHP and MySQL
http://www.ozzu.com/ftopic56303.html

Wikis - and how to create them quickly and easily
http://c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/wikis.html