Wikis are a natural tool for collaborative genealogy efforts and for thousands of other online tasks. Several genealogy wikis already exist and I am sure that we will see more in coming months. I have written before about wikis. However, a new 4-minute video does a great job of explaining the basics of a wiki.
If anything, the "Wikis in Plain English" video is a bit too simplistic. However, it will get you started. You can view the video at http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english.
Once you learn the basics in the video, you might want to read a more detailed explanation on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki.
NOTE: Wikipedia is the largest wiki in the world.
You can find genealogy wikis at:
The Encyclopedia of Genealogy at http://www.eogen.com
WeRelate at http://www.werelate.org
WikiTree at http://www.wikitree.org
I wonder if you could recommend a good wiki for collaboration with family members that is either hosted or that could be added to a family website? I have looked at a number (and use one), but have not really been satisfied with their features for genealogical collaboration.
Posted by: Don Anderson | June 07, 2007 at 07:12 AM
There are several good wikis for projects like that. For genealogy-specific wikis, look at http://www.WeRelate.org which is a public wiki that accepts input from everyone. It is remotely hosted. I wrote a review of that at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/06/werelate.html .
Another favorite is The Next Generation at http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php that is not a true wiki but has many "wiki-like" features. The Next Generation can be either locally hosted or remotely hosted. I wrote a review of that at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2004/06/the_next_genera.html and my review was based on a remotely-hosted installation.
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | June 07, 2007 at 12:03 PM