[yapc] Kwiki Clarification

[Jim Brandt]

I thought I would send out a clarification on how the kwiki works, in 
case there is any confusion. If you know what a kwiki is, you can 
delete now.

A wiki is basically a web site you can edit. A kwiki is an 
easy-to-set-up (quick) wiki that runs using a module developed by Brian 
Ingerson.

Since the idea of a kwiki is to allow anyone to edit the pages, it is 
by it's nature somewhat unofficial (after all, anyone can change the 
content). However, over the last few years several conferences such as 
YAPC and OSCON have found kwiki's very useful for many things.

On the YAPC kwiki, the list of attendees and dorms residents are not 
official lists from the conference. They are entries by people who are 
coming to the conference who chose to put themselves in there. They 
chose to do this because it allows other people to get together with 
them at the conference. The other advantage of putting yourself in the 
kwiki is you can create a new page with information about yourself. So 
if you'd like to be listed in the kwiki, please feel free to add 
yourself.

Now, one of the unfortunate side-effects of letting everyone edit your 
website is that someone might make a mistake, or even worse not like 
your conference and be malicious. While the latter doesn't happen much, 
the former can, especially as people new to the kwiki concept become 
familiar with it. If you've added content and it disappears (as 
happened to at least one person), try adding it again. If it disappears 
again, we can track down the cause [and make sure the cause doesn't get 
Harry Potter tickets :) ]

If you're new to kwiki's, there are instructions at the bottom of the 
page. Two useful links:

http://yapc.kwiki.org/index.cgi?KwikiHelpIndex
http://yapc.kwiki.org/index.cgi?KwikiFormattingRules

These are very helpful in learning the simple syntax for adding content 
to the kwiki. You can also look at how other people have added content.

Sorry for the long-winded post, but I know when I first learned about 
kwikis I was quite puzzled. I hope this helps.

Jim

================================
Jim Brandt
YAPC Coordinator
YAPC::NA::2004
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY