CSL Wikipedia Presentation

A Quote to Start With

The quote by itself

“Who, singular or plural, invented Tlön? The plural is, I suppose, inevitable, since the hypothesis of a single inventor — some infinite Leibniz working in obscurity and self-effacement — has been unanimously discarded. It is conjectured that this ‘brave new world’ is the work of a secret society of astronomers, biologists, engineers, metaphysicians, poets, chemists, algebrists, moralists, painters, geometers, ... guided and directed by some shadowy man of genius. There are many men adept in those diverse disciplines, but few capable of imagination — fewer still capable of subordinating imagination to a rigorous and systematic plan. The plan is so vast that the contribution of each writer is infinitesimal.”

Jorge Luis Borges “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1940)

A Bus

• WikiWikiWeb was the first site to be called a wiki.
• Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995.
• It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the "Wiki Wiki" shuttle bus that runs between the airport's terminals.

MediaWiki is a Foundation

Wikipedia Meta-Wiki Wiktionary Wikibooks Wikiquote Wikisource Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Incubator Wikispieces Wikinews wikiversity

MediaWiki is software

• GPL = FREE + Open Source

• MediaWiki server best on LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySql, Php), but also Windows and Mac

• Scalable

• Small: 36 MB of PHP pages once installed

• Skins & Customization

• SOME SKINS
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  Skin 1

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  Skin 2

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  Skin 3

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  Skin 4

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  Skin 5

Setting up one's own Wiki site

• Wikia
• Third parties, e.g. http://www.siteground.com/mediawiki-hosting.htm

A Parting Quote

You work your labyrinthine ears,
those perfect disciplines,
registering all that hums, ticks.
O you encyclopedia you [...]

From Spencer Reece, The Clerk's Tale. (The Poetry Center at Smith, 9/30/08, 7:30 p.m.)