The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia Review

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(More customer reviews)`The Wikipedia Revolution` (2009) is probably the first serious attempt at a book-length history of Wikipedia. Unfortunately Andrew Lih is not a trained historian, it is a journalistic account with more reporting and synthesis than original interpretation. However it is still a quick and interesting read, even if Lih is a devout Wikipedian. Certain sections stand out: the history of Ward Cunningham who invented the Wiki software; the history of Larry Sanger and his role as "co-founder" (or not, depending, but it is not resolved here). The role of Usenet, Hypercard, Slashdot and MeatballWiki in the formation of early Wikipedia. A glimpse into the vastly different cultures of Japanese, Chinese, German and other foreign language Wikipedias. An overview of some (in)famous incidents such as Seigenthaler and Essjay. Lih appears to have researched the book mostly using archival sources - I was disappointed not to find new interviews with Wales, Sanger or any number of others - it takes away from the books value in the long term as a primary source, a missed opportunity to add to the historical record.
There is a short Introduction by Jimmy Wales which is a standard stump speech heard many times before. The Afterword contains a crowd-sourced essay on the future of Wikipedia and it does contain a meaty examination of the difficult issues facing Wikipedia now and in the future. I found it to be surprisingly good. The Afterword is released under a Creative Commons BY license so it's freely available to copy - it's odd Lih did not point to where it can be found online. [UPDATE: see "Comments" below for a URL]
I would recommend this book for anyone who has been a long time member of Wikipedia and wants to learn more about 'a history experienced' over the past 8 years or so. There is so much that could be said about Wikipedia this book just grazes the surface but it's a good entry into what will certainly becoming a growing library of books about Wikipedia in the future.

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Blogs. Wikipedia. Second Life. and Beyond (Digital Formations) Review

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(More customer reviews)I read this book as part of my graduate studies in communication at the University of Utah. I stumbled upon the author, but when I read this book, I knew I was on to something.
Bruns covers a lot of ground in this book, providing a good overview of the current state of online information production. The book focuses on collaborative information production and how this is disrupting "industrial" forms of content creation. Anyone familiar with Bruns' previous book, "Gatewatching," will find this book to be an excellent extension of that work.
Bruns' key discussion in "Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond" is how the audience has moved from users to "produsers," a term he coined. Scholars and general observers alike will find his analysis helpful and well written. Most of the book is composed of insightful case studies. It's definitely worth a look.

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We—the users turned creators and distributors of content—are TIMEÂ's Person of theYear 2006, and AdAgeÂ's Advertising Agency of the Year 2007. We form a new Generation C. We have MySpace, YouTube, and OurMedia; we run social software, and drive the development of Web 2.0. But beyond the hype, whatÂ's really going on? In this groundbreaking exploration of our developing participatory online culture, Axel Bruns establishes the core principles which drive the rise of collaborative content creation in environments, from open source through blogs and Wikipedia to Second Life. This book shows that whatÂ's emerging here is no longer just a new form of content production, but a new process for the continuous creation and extension of knowledge and art by collaborative communities: produsage. The implications of the gradual shift from production to produsage are profound, and will affect the very core of our culture, economy, society, and democracy. Building on an analysis of key sites including Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, and Second Life, it explores the intellectual, technological, and social implications of produsage, as well as the legal and economic models employed by produsage projects. In doing so, the book highlights the implications of produsage for our culture, democracy, and society.

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Collaboration 2.0: Technology and Best Practices for Successful Collaboration in a Web 2.0 World Review

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(More customer reviews)My personal experience in key segments of the collaboration software market space stretches back about 25 years, pre-dating "CRM" even before it was called "sales force automation," with products such as ACT!, and later GoldMine (especially through the 90s) as they moved from desktops to networks.
It was a crowded, confusing marketplace then, and it's even-more-so now. But David Coleman and Stewart Levine have taken an often brilliant stab at the interesting challenge of looking at collaboration beyond the sales force, on an organizational level, in their new book, "Collaboration 2.0: Technology and Best Practices for Successful Collaboration in a Web 2.0 World."
I've read two books in the past five months that will have a direct impact on my business, my sales and my life and Collaboration 2.0 is one of those. (The other being Sales Essentials by Stephen Schiffman.) Throughout Coleman & Levine's book they deal with people, processes, and technologies that best complement each other. I believe these two authors provide a first-class overview of collaboration technologies, how they can be applied and what the best behaviors are to help make "teams" work more effectively.
The authors cover a wide scope on a very fragmented and rapidly evolving technology environment and help the reader make sense of it.

Although the first part of the book written by David Coleman does give a great overview of current and emerging collaboration technologies, it also ties these technologies to specific business processes measured against what they call "collaborative leverage."

I think this is important in that collaboration without a specific place to apply it and without a specific goal is just software that can promote social interactions between people. But online communities, whether social or business, must meet some objective. And in the case of business users, collaborative efforts must be "dollarized."
The second part of the book, written by Stewart Levine, really looks at people and processes and deals with techniques to build trust and agreement. Most of Stewart's ideas are very practical, and often can be seen as "Communication 101." The fact that Levine applies these techniques to the new collaborative environments is one of the things that make this book so essential.
The final part of the book looks at how to apply the best practices of people, process and technology (for collaboration) and how to get the most from this application. The final chapter takes a somewhat "big picture" view and looks at the effects of collaboration on society, and in this case, how these collaboration technologies affect environmental sustainability.
To me this book is a "must-read" for people who sell or who market products and services for a living. It shows you how to work smarter and the bottom-line benefit is that you can cut the length of the sales cycle. This is the biggest bugaboo in the game. I need deals closed today, not tomorrow. Collaboration, done right, helps to make that happen. I don't have to always feel like I'm all out there alone.
Before I started my own company (sixteen years ago) my boss used to say to me daily, "Make it happen. It has to happen." I just wish I had collaboration tools and techniques back then, instead of nothing more than a pair of brass balls.

If you sell for a living, I highly recommend this book. If you are involved in any "project-type" work, the book is recommended. For students and professionals alike who have an interest in collaboration in the new millennium, this is a book that will benefit you in many ways!


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With the advent of Web 2.0, we are seeing dramatic changes in the way people interact with each other via the Internet. Blogs, Wikis, online communities, social networks, and distributed teams are just some of the ways these technologies are shaping our interactions.
David Coleman is an expert in the area of collaborative processes and technologies and Stewart Levine is an expert on how to get people to work together more effectively. Together David and Stewart encompass a holistic view of these new technologies and processes and help groups, teams, departments and organizations to work better and more effectively over time and distance.

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Essential SharePoint 2007 Review

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(More customer reviews)Being a SharePoint architect, I always get asked by clients and end users for resources/books to learn SharePoint functionality. The users don't want to know the gritty programming details, but want to know the functionality at a high level so that they can use the portal to its potential. I have always had a tough time recommending to clients a good book....but now with this book, I feel comfortable as well as confident that clients would feel at home reading this book.
The book talks about what collaboration is and how to implement a successful portal. From an end-user perspective it goes through all the out of the box functionality which is available and which can be implemented without writing a single line of code. The search functionality of MOSS has been very well explained. End users can very easily implement out-of-the-box workflows. The publishing features are very clearly explained.
Overall, I am very pleased with the book. Bear in mind the audience for this book is not a developer. Its mainly for the business/end-user community.


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Essential SharePoint® 2007 focuses on utilizing Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 to improve collaboration and decision-making, streamline processes, and solve real-world business problems. Three leading SharePoint consultants systematically address the crucial success factors, intangibles, and "gotchas" in SharePointdeployment–showing exactly how to maximize business value and reduce project risk.Drawing on their unsurpassed experience, the authors walk you through planning and architecting successful SharePoint solutions around the unique needs of your business. Next, they address the operational support and end-user functionality needed to make SharePoint 2007 work–with special attention given to the organizational and political issues that can make or break your project. Learn how to:Define optimal, workable collaboration strategies

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Collective Intelligence in Action Review

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(More customer reviews)I was recently asked by the publisher to review Collective Intelligence in Action. The author is Satnam Alag, a Bay area engineer with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Alag is VP of NextBio, a specialized search engine.
The first chapter is free and so is the source code used in the book.
The book is for Java developers who want to implement "Collective Intelligence" applications in Java. It tells us about extracting and applying data from blogs, wikis and social network applications. I am not one to praise, but this book succeeds brilliantly. If you are a Java engineer and work with Web technologies, you must get this book. It covers topics such as computing similarity measures using vector models, Nai've Bayes Classifiers, inverse document frequency (idf), Machine Learning (using the Weka API), building a crawler with regular expressions, collaborative filtering (with links to open source tools), and so on.
Even if you do not work with Java, if you care for high-end Web applications, this book is for you. It reminds me of Lyon's Java¿ Digital Signal Processing book. It offers the gist of what academia knows, but focuses on what people (engineers and researchers) do in practise.
The book is not meant for academia however. There are references, but no theorem.
Disclaimer. I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author.
Further reading. A competing book is Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications by Toby Segaran. It uses Python instead of Java.

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There's a great deal of wisdom in a crowd, but how do you listen to a thousand people talking at once? Identifying the wants, needs, and knowledge of internet users can be like listening to a mob.

In the Web 2.0 era, leveraging the collective power of user contributions, interactions, and feedback is the key to market dominance. A new category of powerful programming techniques lets you discover the patterns, inter-relationships, and individual profiles-the collective intelligence--locked in the data people leave behind as they surf websites, post blogs, and interact with other users.

Collective Intelligence in Action is a hands-on guidebook for implementing collective intelligence concepts using Java. It is the first Java-based book to emphasize the underlying algorithms and technical implementation of vital data gathering and mining techniques like analyzing trends, discovering relationships, and making predictions. It provides a pragmatic approach to personalization by combining content-based analysis with collaborative approaches.

This book is for Java developers implementing Collective Intelligence in real, high-use applications. Following a running example in which you harvest and use information from blogs, you learn to develop software that you can embed in your own applications. The code examples are immediately reusable and give the Java developer a working collective intelligence toolkit.

Along the way, you work with, a number of APIs and open-source toolkits including text analysis and search using Lucene, web-crawling using Nutch, and applying machine learning algorithms using WEKA and the Java Data Mining (JDM) standard.

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Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World Review

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(More customer reviews)Using the power of each of us to solve problems that challenge all of us is the central premise of Macrowikinomics. Tapscott has always been good at spotting, shaping and branding trends and this book is no exception. However, this book repeats and restates earlier ideas rather then moving forward to the next logical question of how we do this.
I am sorry to provide a less than enthusiastic review, as I am sure others will find this book revolutionary. However, I am reviewing the book as someone who wants to learn how to make the changes that Tapscott and Williams advocate in my company and industry.
The authors do cover different industries and mention emerging companies giving the impression that the book breaks new ground. However, readers familiar with Tapscott's other works will find that this book repeats and restates Wikinomics more than it covers new ground. It is clear that Tapscott and Williams are looking at this issue from the macro economic rather than business perspective. Is there microwikinomics in the wings?
The book's structure reinforces this observation as it starts by revisiting the basics of the Wikinomics and the five principles of networked intelligence: Collaboration, Openess, Sharing, Integrity and Interdependence. The authors next concentrate on discussing the complex challenges and industries under threat. These include: Green energy, Transportation, Education, Health Care, Media and Government.
The middle section repeats the same pattern of describing their issue, the inability of modern approaches to address the issue and examples of companies using wikinomics to address the issue which that authors report are too early to be reshaping the world we live in.
The last part of the book concentrates on the challenges posed by wikinomics. In my opinion these last two chapters are the more valuable parts of the book, particularly for someone who has already read Wikinomics. But these chapters, like the rest of the book, raises more issues than it resolves.
Recommendations
If you are a wikinomics fan, then you will probably buy the book no matter what anyone says. As a reader familiar with Wikinomics I found more examples but little in the ways of new ideas or applications. The examples are interesting but they lack specifics of how you apply wikinomic principles.
This is a four star book, if you are new to Wikinomics. Macrowikinomics has more examples of than the original book. I would suggest reading Chapters 1-4, then the chapters related to your industry and finish with chapters 18 and 19. This should make the book about 150 - 200 pages which is an appropriate length.
This is a three star book for those who enjoyed Wikinomics and wanted to learn more about how leaders are applying these ideas rather than where the ideas could be applied. I had hoped for more than an expanded restatement of the earlier book.
Strengths
Comprehensive in tackling a diverse set of global issues and industries. The breadth of Tapscott and William's discussion illustrates the broad ability of social media and mass collaboration to change the way the world works.
Company specific examples are interesting and they do illustrate that people are applying these ideas in each of these areas, but the examples are general marketing level descriptions rather than providing actionable advice.
The beginning and the end of the book are quite clear and provide a good overview of the ideas in the book. These include chapters 2, 4, 18 and 19.Challenges
The authors have had more than three years since the introduction of Wikinomics to understand how these forces work in companies. Unfortunately there is little of this understanding in the book. It does not discuss how to address significant issues such as assigning responsibility, accountability, management, measurement and rewards. These are issues that people running companies need to face and ones that people studying rather than living the problem can overlook.
The authors are at times strident in their dismissal of current governments, companies, industries and individuals. Throughout the book the authors are clear that they believe that believe that wikinomics is the only way to solve these issues. This may be a good way to energize people around social issues, but it does little to help people apply these ideas to evolve from where they are to where they need to be.
Americans appear to be the primary audience for the book. While Tapscott and Williams mention India and China, their intended audience is people in the U.S. This is surprising given the author's calls for a coordinated global response to economic and environmental issues.
The book is long at over 400 pages; in large part because of the middle chapters follow a similar structure, which makes the book seem repetitive and reinforces the impression that the authors believe that the same solution applies to every situation.
The notion of 'rebooting business and the world' is an interesting premise and an inaccurate description of what the authors intend since rebooting is used most often as a way of solving problems by resetting the system to its original configuration. This is not what the authors intend but it's the analogy they have chosen.

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In their 2007 bestseller, Wikinomics Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams showed the world how mass collaboration was changing the way businesses communicate, create value, and compete in the new global marketplace. Now, in the wake of the global financial crisis, the principles of wikinomics have become more powerful than ever. Many of the institutions that have served us well for decades or centuries seem stuck in the past and unable to move forward. And yet, in every corner of the globe, a powerful new model of economic and social innovation is sweeping across all sectors-one where people with drive, passion, and expertise take advantage of new Web-based tools to get more involved in making the world more prosperous, just, and sustainable. Tapscott and Williams show that in over a dozen fields-from finance to health care, science to education, the media to the environment-we have reached a historic turning point: cling to the old industrial-era paradigms or use collaborative innovation to revolutionize not only the way we work, but how we live, learn, create, govern, and care for one another. You'll meet innovators such as: * An Iraq veteran whose start-up car company is "staffed" by over 4,500 competing designers and supplied by microfactories around the world * A microlending community where 570,000 individuals help fund new ventures-from Angola to Vietnam * An online community for people with life-altering diseases that also serves as a large-scale research project * An astronomer who is mapping the universe with the help of 250,000 citizen scientists Tapscott and Williams once again use original research to provide vivid new examples of organizations that are successfully embracing the principles of wikinomics to change the world. Visit www.Macrowikinomics.com.

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How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part of It Review

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(More customer reviews)This book might also be titled "Wikipedia in Context". It tells in detail what Wikipedia is and what it is not; it even has a history of encyclopedias and talks about how Wikipedia fits into this tradition. It goes into detail on the culture and motivations of the people who work on Wikipedia. It covers the mission of the project and speculates on the global impact it will have someday.
There is an especially valuable chapter on "Understanding and Evaluating an Article" with a lot of good tips. Traditional encyclopedias are written by authorities in the field, but Wikipedia is written by a wide variety of authors, some experts, some amateurs, some fanatics, and some vandals. The appeal to authority doesn't work for Wikipedia.
There are real-life case studies scattered through the book about the internal workings of Wikipedia and its interaction with the real world. The most startling and sobering is the story of Turkish scholar Taner Akçam, who was detained at Montreal's Trudeau Airport by Canadian officials who had read in Wikipedia an incorrect report that he was a terrorist.
I only have a couple of gripes about this book. The screen shots highlight the relevant parts by graying everything else, which I like, but the gray is so dark it's hard to see the screen clearly and tell where you are. The index is lengthy but it was hard to find things in it; it seems to index only the main discussion of each topic and not any other references to it.
Compared to John Broughton's Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, this book is much broader and shallower. The Missing Manual is aimed at people who want to edit (add material and articles to) Wikipedia, and goes into great detail on both the mechanics of changing Wikipedia and the policies and customs that govern these changes. The present book has much useful material on these subjects, but it has just enough to get you started editing (roughly the middle third of the book deals with this). I have found both books extremely valuable, but they are aimed at different audiences and don't compete directly with each other. If you have a casual interest in Wikipedia, or are just getting started as an editor, "How Wikipedia Works" is the book for you. Beginning editors can also benefit from "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" but may find the level of detail overwhelming; it is better for experienced editors.


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Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft® SharePoint® Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways (Bp-Other) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is everything that I hoped SharePoint for Project Management: How to Create a Project Management Information System (PMIS) with SharePoint would be. While "SharePoint for Project Management" is rather simplistic and aimed at someone who has never used SharePoint before, Seamless Teamwork really has some great ideas on how to use SharePoint to collaborate on projects. Even while going deep into the capabilities of SharePoint, the book and recommendations are very readable and easy to follow. Beyond even the amazing capabilities of SharePoint, the author discusses considerations for virtual teams, working offline, and how to convince teams to work on SharePoint instead of falling back on e-mail. I have been using SharePoint heavily for the last year and still got some great ideas on ways I could use SharePoint to better manage ongoing projects. This book is HIGHLY recommended for anyone that uses SharePoint to collaborate on projects.

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Take the lead-and deliver better results-by revolutionizing the way you and your colleagues communicate, collaborate, and coordinate everyday work. Dive in as the author, a collaboration expert, demonstrates how to inspire great teamwork using Microsoft SharePoint technologies. Discover the best practices that enable even far-flung teams to produce powerfully productive results-and apply them to your own projects!

Learn how to:

Follow a five-phase approach to managing teams and projects
Synchronize your team's vision, as well as their work
Structure SharePoint sites to give people a place to work and a place to see what's going on
Inspire more creative problem-solving through team wikis and blogs
Capture and coordinate team and stakeholder feedback more efficiently
Drive the smart, timely decisions that keep projects on track
Wrap up projects the right way-for results you can repeat

Includes bonus chapters online.

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Digital Habitats; stewarding technology for communities Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm often the technology steward for communities of practice (CoP). I create the Ning spaces and configure `em, I setup the email lists, I work out whether we should have a wiki or a blog or a discussion forum or some other combination of communication technologies. As you can see I'm quite a geek: I really do love it.
And whenever I get stuck I'll contact my friends at CPSquare: Etienne, Nancy and John. And while I know they all have a deep understanding of CoPs I tend to ask Etienne the theory questions, Nancy the technology questions and John the group dynamics questions. Together they are a formidable team. Sadly I think their new book, Digital Habitats, will give them strong cause to suggest I should RTFM: Read The Flipping Manual.
Digital Habitats (DH) has a single goal: to help the reader understand the role of technology steward in cultivating a community of practice: what is it, why you would do it, are you are cut out for it, how to do it and where to find help. But it is not a shoppers guide nor a roadmap for technology selection.
There is a lovely photo of Etienne, Nancy and John in the preface and I feel that reading DH is like have a friendly conversation with them on a sunny balcony. They provide the context, a little theory, then lots of practical tips supported by real life stories to ground it and make it memorable.
For me there are three ideas in this book I have already put into practice with great effect.
Experience shows us that all know that communities of practice are different, and sometimes poles apart. DH introduces the idea of community orientations to help us understand where the emphasis might lie and therefore what technologies make most sense.
There are 9 orientations: meetings, open-ended conversations, projects, content, access to expertise, relationships, individual participation, community participation, serving a context. With my engineering communities, for example, I've asked the members where they see their current orientation and then ask them to identify where they would like to be. A community might start off very content focussed but realise that the real benefits will come from providing access to expertise. By understanding this orientation gap the technology steward can start introducing tools to facilitate the future orientation needs.
The second idea I find useful is how my friends (I was going to say `the authors' but it didn't feel right) describe the range of activities a community might be engaged in. The axis range from informal to formal and learning from to learning with. This diagram helps me ensure I'm thinking about the full range of possibilities when helping communities members design their CoP.
DH envisages three types of readers: deep divers, attentive practitioners and just do it-ers. The just do it-ers are directed to chapter 10 which contains an action notebook. It is a series of checklists to help you think about the role of the technology steward. What I love about chapter 10 is that I can jump in and start learning about the role by doing things and then come back to the descriptions contained in the rest of the book when it is more meaningful for me. DH makes the job of finding the relevant descriptions in the other chapters easy through a multitude of cross-links from chapter 10 to the relevant book section.
There are very few practical community of practice books available (I can think of 3 others) and Etienne has already had a hand in writing one of them. So Digital Habitats is a valuable addition to this exclusive club. It's highly readable and practical and will definitely help make a difference to the quality of your technology support for your community of practice.

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Technology has changed what it means for communities to "be together." Digital tools are now part of most communities' habitats. This book develops a new literacy and language to describe the practice of stewarding technology for communities.Whether you want to ground your technology stewardship in theory and deepen your practice, whether you are a community leader or sponsor who wants to understand how communities and technology intersect, or whether you just want practical advice, this is the book for you.

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Wikis: Tools for Information Work and Collaboration (Information Professional S.) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book serves as a good introduction to wikis: their history, their possible uses, their unique characterstics, and how they are used in both corporated and educational environments. It gives lots of examples of both public and corporate wikis. If you are looking to set up a wiki, this can point you to helpful resources, but will not give you specific step-by-step instructions.

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This book covers wikis as information sources, as a form of publishing, and as tools for collaboration. The application of wikis in library and information services, education and businesses is also examined through practical guidance and real world examples. This book identifies and describes the different kinds of wikis, as well as the advantages and problems associated with their use in information work and collaboration. There is discussion of directories, search engines and other finding tools, as well as options for creating and managing wikis. The book also includes lists of resources related to wikis.

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Community Leadership 4.0: Impacting a World Gone Wiki Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is able to clearly define concepts that were cloudy in my mind. It provides insight into the goals we should be striving for as leaders and allows you to step back to view the whole picture. This is definitely a good resource to help people grow and become better leaders.

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Community Leadership 4.0 by Carolyn Corbin offers up a unique and original approach for building and sustaining communities in the 21st Century. This book is about the cutting-edge skills required to evolve our old ideas about what a community is to what it could be. The future is not necessarily a continuation of the present and the author demonstrates how structural changes in communities are happening at "warp speed," thus impacting the future of community development. In today's "world gone wiki" environment, chaos is prevalent. Author Corbin points out the five major paradoxes that must be kept in balance in order to prevent community polarization, turmoil, and gridlock. Community Leadership 4.0 presents the most concise and up-to-date information available defining the leadership requirements necessary to nourish, support, and cultivate healthy and sustainable communities into the future.

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Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful Review

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(More customer reviews)Anyone interested in using the Internet to help improve the way government works should read this book. Noveck presents an excellent background describing the problems with existing government decision-making processes, a case study of the Peer-to-patent process she helped develop and recommendations for developing effective Internet based applications.
The book is well written and edited, easy to read and full of examples that will spur your creativity. I read it quickly and thought it was very good, but as I go back and re-read sections I think it's extraordinary.

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Collaborative democracy-government with the people-is a new vision of governance in the digital age. Wiki Government explains how to translate the vision into reality. Beth Simone Noveck draws on her experience in creating Peer-to-Patent, the federal government's first social networking initiative, to show how technology can connect the expertise of the many to the power of the few. In the process, she reveals what it takes to innovate in government.

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MediaWiki 1.1: Beginner's Guide Review

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(More customer reviews)Surely you have heard of Wikipedia? That online encyclopedia has been a stunning success. Behind it was the MediaWiki engine. That is endorsement enough to have a serious look at MediaWiki. Also, many other websites have taken MediaWiki and modified it for their needs.
What this book does is given an elementary tour of MediaWiki. Starting with how to get and install it. Then various chapters go into the many customisations possible. You learn that MediaWiki sits atop a database [default=MySQL] and uses PHP as its coding language. The book deliberately does not elaborate on the theory of relational databases or the syntax of MySQL. Ditto for the syntax of PHP. The focus is plainly on MediaWiki. We have to be practical here. Otherwise we would be looking at several hundred more pages on peripheral topics.
MediaWiki uses several configuration files, and the book gives examples of how to edit these to change the look and feel of your website. There are some sample SQL statements, of considerable complexity, and some sample PHP code. These hint tantalisingly at many more involved possibilities.
But the book is mostly about the editing of configuration files. As for the logic that uses those files, and how you might change that logic, that is reserved for other books. Perhaps by the current authors, as an Advanced Guide?
Along these lines, a related book, MediaWiki Skins Design: Designing attractive skins and templates for your MediaWiki site, might be interesting to some readers. It goes further into how the skins [aka. look and feel] can be tweaked for your purposes.

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This book was written with the beginner in mind. It walks you through step-by-step exercises and makes use of illustrations to show exactly what is going on in each. You will be taken through exercises that not only help you to build a solid, secure wiki, but provide a foundation on which you can build and challenge yourself to learn even more. Throughout the book, you will follow along as a wiki dedicated to free/open source software built from the ground up.If you are a Web Designer, IT Administrator or Executive, or a Programmer and wish to gain a solid foundation in the MediaWiki software application, then this book is for you.

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Wikipedia: The Missing Manual Review

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(More customer reviews)Wikipedia, the free access online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute, is a remarkable achievement. Started only in 2001, it now comprises over 9 million articles is written in over 250 languages, and is the first choice for reference material for millions of Internet users. Despite criticisms by some for the variable quality of its material, the value of the contributions of tens of thousands of unpaid volunteers is enormous, not only in notable and verified content accessible to the vast majority of the world's population in their native languages, but in the opportunity for everyone to contribute to this repository of knowledge in his or her own way (subject to the review and editing of others just like themselves.)
More importantly, in my view, is the model it represents in human collaboration efforts, this one in creating a repository of knowledge, but applicable more broadly to other efforts. Besides merely creating enormously useful things, the collaborative efforts result in a community of people and groups which has its own intrinsic values. Imagine thousands of volunteers committing their personal time and effort into a nonhierarchical, consensus-based collaboration having as its selfless main purpose the improvement of human society. Socialism at its best! It seems to me that the model may be useful in areas of politics, management and administration, education, and other social endeavors.. The Open-Source software movement, predating Wikipedia, operates in much the same way. Perhaps the earliest example of this collaborative model was the developmental years of the Internet.
As a casual user of Wikipedia, I had no idea of the nature of the Wikipedia project (and its sister projects - Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikinews, and Wikiversity - and no doubt others yet to come) until I read "Wikipedia: the Missing Manual," by John Broughton. He is an experienced Wikipedia editor with over 15,000 edits to his credit and is the creator of the "Editor's Index to Wikipedia" which lists every reference page on Wikipedia as well as other off site pages with information useful for serious Wikipedia editors. "Wikipedia: the Missing Manual" is an extremely thorough guide to creating and editing Wikipedia articles. The book is intended to help train new writers and editors and to improve the skills and knowledge of existing participants.
Broughton encourages people to join the Wikipedia community of researchers, fact checkers, and proofreaders. This community seems to be made up of committed, skilled, and serious people who take great pride in the project. There is little organizational hierarchy involved and a minimum of formal participatory rules, but a large set of informal mores and practices which help maintain production, efficiency, civility, and quality. There is always a need for more articles, although of the thousands created every day, nearly one half of them are deleted within 24 hours by attentive editors for a number of reasons explained in the book.
The book starts with an introduction to the basic principles of the Wikipedia project involving notability, credibility, balance, consensus, and good faith and moves quickly into the process of registering with Wikipedia, setting up a user account, and starting out practicing writing, previewing, and saving edits.
In six parts and 21 chapters, the book covers how to document sources, set up an editor's account, and personal workspaces, create new articles, use page histories, monitor changes, and dealing with vandalism and spam. It explains the value of collaborating with other editors and participants in creating and editing articles and in special Wiki Projects and other group efforts. There are several chapters describing how to deal with the inevitable conflict between editors and explains the Wikipedia editing mores of civility, ethics, legality (mostly copyright issues), and efficiency. He explains why editors disagree, in what ways, and how they resolve disputes. He also provides guidance on how disputes can be avoided in the first place.
Separate chapters of the book detail how to work with article pages and sections, tables, lists, markups and links, images and media, and categories. There are descriptions of what makes a good article and what doesn't and there are step-by-step tutorials on creating better articles and being systematic about good editing practices. A most interesting feature of Wikipedia is its large collection of free-to-use images, videos, sound clips, and other media in the Wikipedia Media Commons area which is available for article use and for non-Wikipedia use by anyone for any purpose.
Advanced topics include customizing your user account via preferences and skins and using JavaScript and templates to facilitate efficiency. There is a short 20 page appendix for those people content with being mere users of Wikipedia and learning how to get the most out of it. More involved users will benefit from Appendix C which itemizes the huge amount of Wikipedia help, reference, coaching, and other educational sources especially valuable for those determined to become better editors or higher-level participants like administrators of Wikipedia.
The presentation is thorough and articulate. It covers basic and advanced editing skills. Broughton frequently notes keyword search items and tips to be more productive and efficient. The community norms demand attentive and educated participants. Experience with coding is appreciated. The book has plenty of screenshots illustrating the discussions of Wikipedia features. Most of the sections contain Notes and Tips which provide more detailed explanations of features and an experienced editor's perspective to the prospective new editor as to how and why to do things. Broughton is (perhaps unintentionally) inspiring about participating in the Wikipedia editor community.
Although the book deserves great credit for its content and its tone a few problems with the layout and design detract a bit. The layout is dense with graphics a bit too tightly packed in with the text. Captions at the bottom of grayscale illustrations occasionally refer to nonexistent color clues resulting in some confusion. The density seems to reflect the nature of Wikipedia editing itself, which can be very involved. But, rewarding.

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Want to be part of the largest group-writing project in human history? Learnhow to contribute to Wikipedia, the user-generated online reference for the 21stcentury. Considered more popular than eBay, Microsoft.com, and Amazon.com,Wikipedia generates approximately 30,000 requests per second, or about 2.5billion per day. It's become the first point of reference for people the worldover who need a fact fast. If you want to jump on board and add to the content,Wikipedia: The Missing Manual is your first-class ticket. Wikipedia has morethan 6 million entries in 250 languages, over 2 million articles in the Englishlanguage alone. Each one is written and edited by an ever-changing cast ofvolunteer editors. You can be one of them. With the tips in this book, you'llquickly learn how to get more out of and put more into this valuableonline resource. Wikipedia: The Missing Manual gives you practical advice oncreating articles and collaborating with fellow editors, improving existingarticles, and working with the Wikipedia community to review new articles,mediate disputes, and maintain the site. Up to the challenge? This one-of-a-kindbook includes: Basic editing techniques, including the right and wrong ways toedit Pinpoint advice about which types of articles do and do not belong onWikipedia Tips on using Wikipedia page histories and reversing inaccurate editsWays to learn from other editors and communicate with them via the site's talkpages Tricks for using templates and timesaving automated editing tools Toolsfor fighting spam and vandalism Guidance on adding citations, links, and imagesto your articles You also learn about other Wikimedia services, such asWikinews, Wikiquote, and Wikibooks. Wikipedia depends on people just like you tohelp the site grow and maintain the highest quality. With Wikipedia: The MissingManual, you get all the tools you need to be part of the crew.--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Leadership in a Wiki World: Leveraging Collective Knowledge To Make the Leap To Extraordinary Performance Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a terrific, insightful book.
In this book, author Rod Collins flatly states that the command-and-control, hierarchic management model is obsolete, and the days of the leader-hero "taking charge" are over. Mr Collins offers rationales based on his real-world and hands-on experience of running a large, complex multi-billion dollar health insurance operation. The main reason the old model is dead is simply this: the world of business is getting incredibly complex, and the top-down hierarchic model cannot cope with all the complexity.
One thing I really liked about the book is the author's willingness to tell it like it is. For example, "When it comes to implementing the insights of the human relations movement, management's efforts have been more about style than substance. Today's managers may spend more time soliciting inputs from their workers, but at the end of the day, managers are still the bosses, the workers are still subordinates, and these professionals are still expected to do as they're told."
Mr Collins notes that this "Do as your told" management style has its origins in the industrial age when mass production ruled, and managers were more educated than their workers. The absurdity is that today we are hired precisely because of our education and knowledge, yet managed as though we're ignorant and clueless.
Fundamentally, as Mr Collins says, "Nobody is smarter than everybody" - yet our management systems treat bosses as smarter than their subordinates. In this situation, the collective knowledge of the organization - so crucial to competitive advantage - is seen to rest with only a chosen few. This leads to knowledge being distorted or lost.
In short, we're managed by methods created for the era of mass production, when instead, we should be managed by new techniques in the era of mass collaboration. And you can't have genuine mass collaboration without changing the underlying power structures in an organization.
Hence, to change things, Mr Collins declares that the sovereignty of the supervisor must end, ie no more bosses. He states, "There is no place for stars and heroes in Digital Age businesses.....there are no bosses and there are no subordinates; there are only workers. And it's the collective organization, not the leader, who is the star."
Often, this approach is misunderstood - both by managers and workers - that leadership is no longer required. Mr Collins explains that in fact, leadership will become even more important. It's just that the nature of leadership will change. Mr Collins says, "The leader's primary responsibility is no longer the content, but rather the context of work."
The book provides several real-world case studies, and practical methods that can be used to change how we work. Mr Collins also introduces the complexity sciences, which will become increasingly relevant as we progress into the 21st century.
If you are truly serious about preparing your organization for an inevitably more complex future, you must buy this book.
Chetan Dhruve
Author, Why Your Boss is Programmed to be a Dictator

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Rod Collins is the owner of Wiki-Management, an innovative consulting company that helps forward thinking business leaders successfully manage complex change by leveraging the power of their collective knowledge. Discover more at www.wiki-management.com "In the age of speed we live in, new rules emerge at a breakneck pace. As a leader, you can either be blindsided by these new rules or let Rod Collins' book give you a welcome heads-up and head start!"~ Vince Poscente, author of the NY Times Bestseller The Age of Speed"Rod Collins has written an engaging and insightful book that clearly answers the question of how the principles of complexity theory can be practically applied to leading large organizations. Leadership in a Wiki World is a timely and highly readable guide that shows business leaders how they can use the rich reservoir of their collective knowledge to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex world."~ Lisa Kimball, President, Plexus Institute"Leadership in a Wiki World provides tremendous insight into how to lead and manage complex, multipartner, large scale business enterprises. Rod Collins' experience as one of the key leaders within the Blues and his accomplishments as the chief operating executive of the single largest employer health plan in the world prepared him well to offer the insights captured in this book. If you want to know what the future of management looks like, I strongly encourage you to read this book."~ Steven S. Martin, Chairman, Board of Managers of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employee Program, and President & CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NebraskaThere's a revolution brewing that is about to end the world of work as we know it. We are fast approachinga tipping point where new capacities for mass collaboration will completely redefine the work we do and the way we work. Technological innovations now make it possible for large numbers of people to work together without going through a central organization - and they can do it smarter, faster, and cheaper.Discover the revolutionary business opportunities created by today's unprecedented business realities and learn:' Why a 19th century management model is unsustainable in a digital world' How business leaders are resetting management practices to create smarter and faster companies' How companies are gaining access to the most untapped free resource inevery organization to catapult their business performance.Leadership in a Wiki World is a practical guide to the principles and practices of wiki-management, the proven management solution for business leaders who understand that managing great change is only possible if we change how we manage.

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WIKI: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit Review

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(More customer reviews)Alan Porter does a great job of introducing this most powerful collaboration and knowledge management tool, wikis.
The book starts explaining wiki technology and how to plan a collaboration project. Porter lists wiki uses by individuals and organizations of different types and sizes. He offers several questions will help define the scope of the reader's project. He presents "the good" and "the bad" of the technology, and how a proper plan and setup can overcome perceived disadvantages of using a wiki.
Next, Porter deals with initial growth of the wiki. Before there is any content there is no incentive to use the tool. Porter recommends seeding the wiki with content that every member of the community uses and that is updated on a regular basis, such as a company directory, project to-do lists, company procedures and style-books. Once there is a small but critical body of documents, the benefits of the wiki become compelling. Editing and new writing become much, much easier, and the content becomes useful. Porter also advises against establishing a complex hierarchy at first, instead letting the users organize the initial content through cross-links.
An area where collaboration projects often fall short is in dealing with continuing growth. With it comes necessary maintenance. As is common among wiki enthusiasts, Porter calls maintenance "gardening". Porter explains the pitfalls, and why it is necessary to appoint a manager ("gardener"). Then he gives suggestions on what the gardener should do periodically to insure a clean and healthy wiki. He also recommends assigning owners to individual pages, similarly to what is good practice for any documentation system.
And beyond gardening, "landscaping" consists of redesigning the organization of the content to provide or improve navigation and to balance the weight of wiki areas. This is done with indexes, hierarchies and categories. Porter warns readers that this redesign will be inevitable, but rightly suggests that it should be embraced and gives tips on how to do so. Some of these are creating a sandbox or separate test-wikis, making improvements in small steps, and superimposing new organization pages on the existing wiki structure. All good practices.
The book also provides advice on many other issues that come up during the deployment of a wiki, like motivating users, page versioning, content accuracy, barriers to adoption, and publishing to a wider audience. Five separate case studies of actual organizational collaboration with wikis give a taste of what is possible with a successful implementation.
I wish I had had this book when starting on wikis. It will certainly help make its readers' wiki projects successful.

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Looking for a way to increase team collaboration? Do you need a better way manage your company's knowledge? Do you need a way to manage projects with customers or suppliers outside your company firewall? Would you like your customers to provide feedback on the information you publish? Then a wiki might be just what you are looking for.WIKI: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit introduces the concept of wikis, and shows why they are becoming the must-have communications and collaboration technology for businesses of any size.Porter provides up-to-date information on selecting a wiki, getting started, overcoming resistance to wikis, maintaining your wiki, and using your wiki for internal collaboration, project planning, communication with your customers, and more.The book includes five case studies that highlight the ways companies are using wikis to solve business and communication problems, increase efficiency, and improve customer satisfaction.

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Wikipatterns Review

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(More customer reviews)Wikis are one of those "Web 2.0" applications that seem to be right on the edge of jumping into mainstream adoption. If your workplace is anything like mine, you've been spending more time lately answering the "what's a wiki" question than you have in the past. If you're starting to approach the point where you're ready to try one out in your organization, here's a good place to start your planning... WikiPatterns - A Practical Guide To Improving Productivity and Collaboration In Your Organization by Stewart Mader. Rather than a "do this, this, and this" instruction manual, Mader gets into the whys and whats of wiki adoption in the workplace, complete with case studies and real-life examples.
Table of Contents:
1. Grassroots is Best
Case Study: LeapFrog
2. Your Wiki Isn't (Necessarily) Wikipedia
Case Study: Johns Hopkins University
3. What's Five Minutes Really Worth?
Case Study: Sun Microsystems
4. 11 Steps to a Successful Wiki Pilot
Case Study: Red Ant
Case Study: A Conversation with a WikiChampion: Jude Higdon
5. Drive Large-Scale Adoption
Case Study: JavaPolis
Case Study: A Conversation with a WikiChampion: Jeff Calado
6. Prevent (or Minimize) Obstacles
Case Study: Kerrydale Street
7. Inspirational Bull****
Case Study: Constitution Day
Case Study: Peter Higgs: Using a Wiki in Research
Appendix - Questions and Answers
Index
Stewart Mader is the Wiki Evangelist for Atlassian Software, who also happens to be the creator of Confluence, an enterprise Wiki software package. But don't let that little bit of disclosure put you off. He is a well-known personality in the wiki community, and he's done the evangelism gig with many a company and organization prior to joining Atlassian. As such, the material is pretty vendor-neutral in terms of what you should and shouldn't be doing. You don't have to worry about sitting through a long sales pitch.
The book is designed to be used in conjunction with the website [...]. That site lists and explores a number of "patterns" and "anti-patterns" that come into play when launching and running a wiki site. Furthermore, it's split up into people and adoption issues. So as you're reading through the book, you'll see references (especially in the case studies) to patterns and anti-patterns that influenced the successes and difficulties of many of the projects. As the wikipatterns concepts are still evolving, the case studies didn't necessarily set out to follow and implement a certain set of behaviors. Quite often, the patterns are seen only in hindsight. But you have the benefit of being able to observe the patterns at work before you get started on your own project. This should help increase your odds of success at the start, or at least give you a clue as to what might be going wrong before it gets too messy to correct.
I personally am at the point where this information is *exactly* what I need at work. We've got a number of people who are ready to start a wiki pilot project, and the only reason I've put it off is due to some other higher-priority projects. But armed with Mader's wisdom, I think I'll have a much better chance of pulling off a successful pilot. I also saw some great ideas for taking the DominoWiki OpenNTF project and extending it (like with page templates) to make the software even more useful and easy to implement.
If you simply want to roll out a wiki for your own use, you'll probably see most of this information as overkill. But if you want to help lead the way to wiki adoption at your company, you could consider this the "teacher's guide" edition of the textbook. Not only will it ground you in the cultural aspects of wiki adoption, but it will establish you as the "go-to" person when it comes to this particular branch of the collaboration software tree.

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This book provides practical, proven advice for encouraging adoption of your wiki project and growing it into a useful collaboration tool or vibrant online community
Gives wiki users a toolbox of thriving wiki patterns, which enable newcomers to avoid making common mistakes or fumbling around for the solutions to the same problems as their predecessors
Explains the major stages of wiki adoption and explores patterns that apply to each stage
Presents concrete, proven examples of techniques that have helped people grow vibrant collaborative communities and change the way they work for the better
Reviews the overall process, including setting up initial content, encouraging people to contribute, dealing with disruptive elements, fixing typos and broken links, making sure pages are in their correct categories, and more

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