1. What is a Wiki?
A Wiki site is a collection of Wiki pages. The main aim of a Wiki site is to make it easy for anyone to contribute and share information. If the information you want is not listed here, check the OSSWatchWikiFAQ.
2. Logging in for the first time
When you first use this Wiki, you should create an account which will give you a username and password. You can do this as follows:
Click on the Login link at the top of the screen.
On the new screen, complete the text boxes labelled Name, Password, Password repeat and Email.
In the Name textbox, choose a name like FirstnameLastname, e.g., TonyBlair.
Then click on Create Profile.
- A new user profile will be created for you and you will be logged in immediately.
The UserPreferences screen will be displayed. Click on the link labelled StartPage.
You may be wondering why OSS Watch requires you to create an account prior to adding or editing the wiki. WhyRegister
3. Logging in the next time
If you are a known user, you can log in as follows:
Click on the Login link at the top of the screen.
On the new screen, just complete the text boxes labelled Name and Password.
In the Name textbox, you will need to type a name in the format FirstnameLastname, e.g., TonyBlair.
Click on the Login button.
4. Logging out
You can log out as follows:
Click on the Logout link at the top of the window
5. Now to the exciting stuff: creating/editing Wiki pages
It is easy to create a new Wiki page or edit an existing one (but see below about the licence you are contributing your content under):
- You can create a new page in the Wiki as follows:
go to a URL like: http://wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/YourName
where YourName is replaced by something like TonyBlair
click on Create new empty page
replace the text Describe TonyBlair here. by some text of your choice.
at the end of your text include the text @SIG@ and this will add your name and the time to the text
scroll up and click on Save Changes
And that's it: the Wiki now has a new page that anyone can read by going to a URL like http://wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/YourName
You can edit any Wiki page by clicking the Edit (GUI) link at the top of the page.
End your changes with the text @SIG@ and this will add your name, the date and time to the text.
Within a Wiki page, you can create a link to another Wiki page by using joined capitalised words like PitfallsWithOpenOffice or with ["pitfalls with OpenOffice"].
You can find out more about using the editor at HelpOnGraphicalEditor.
Instead of creating your own page in order to pactice, you could visit the WikiSandBox; this is a page where you can do experiments.
6. Licensing your content contributions to the OSS Watch wiki
Any time you are about to make a change to an OSS Wiki page you are instructed that
By hitting Save Changes you put your changes under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales Licence. If you don't want that, hit Cancel to cancel your changes.
Collaborative content creation in wikis assumes that you are either the copyright holder of the content you are contributing or you have permission from the copyright holder (e.g. your employer) to make such content contributions. You are not assigning your copyright over to the University of Oxford. Rather, you are licensing your content under a licence which facilitates the redistribution of that content as part of a similarly licensed collective work - the wiki page. The Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 England & Wales Licence by which you have contributed your content ensures that your specific contribution to that page can be traced backed and acknowledged. By clicking the info link on any page, you can discover the Revision History of that page and thus the acknowledgement of the individual contributors. Although the page as a whole is copyright University of Oxford, this does not affect the copyright on the individual contributions to it. Rather like the copyright on a collection of essays or short stories.
Although Creative Commons licences are not open source licences and are therefore very rarely used for source code, they share many similarities and have their roots in a shared desire for openness and freedom of content. For more information on Creative Commons licences see http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/cclicensing.xml
7. Some info about the links at the top of the page
You can get back to the startpage using the StartPage link at the top of the screen.
You can see where people are currently working by using the RecentChanges link.
You can search or browse the collection of Wiki pages in various ways using the FindPage link.
You can access all of the help pages using the HelpContents link.
You can edit a page by clicking the Edit (Text) or Edit (GUI) links. The Edit (Text) allows editing using a traditional wiki text box, while the Edit (GUI) link allows editing using a GUI (Graphical User Interface) editor, which doesn't require any knowledge of wiki syntax.
Note Immutable Page will appear instead of the Edit links if you are not allowed to edit the page.
You can see the revision history for a page by using the Info link.
You can request notification of changes to the page with the Subscribe link. This changes to an Unsubscribe link once you are subscribed.
You can add a link to the current page with the Add Link link. Links appear on your UserPreferences page.
You can view, add or remove attachments with the Attachments link.
8. Pointers to some information about Wikis
This wiki uses some software called MoinMoin. To learn more about what a WikiWikiWeb is, read about WhyWikiWorks and the WikiNature. Also, consult the WikiWikiWebFaq.
