Also see the quick start guide.

The point about WIKIs is that they are collaborative - they are a form of peer review if used well (even Nature agrees they are useful).

Here’s an example - Bob makes a page that says:

"Turnips are a root vegetable that are best eaten raw."

Frank, being an expert in Turnips, thinks he can add something to this:

"Turnips are a root vegetable that are best eaten raw (though they are generaly cooked before eating).  
In several parts of the UK there are annual Turnip festivals, where amuzing Turnip carvings are exhibited. "

Etcetera etcetera... At the bottom of each page is a button saying ‘Old Revisions’ where you can see all the different versions of the page and who did what.

Wikis work really well if you are nice - please play ball and don’t be inflamatory, rude or agressive (or we will unregister you). Read more about wikis on wikipedia.

Edit an exsiting page and make a reference to your new page by either:

• UsingCamelCase (i.e. WriteWordsStuckTogetherWithCapitalLetters ) or
• [[putting it in double brackets]] ...

Save the page, and you will have a link to your page. Click on this and follow the instructions (don’t forget to save the new page). That’s it, you’ve published your information on the site.

Fuller instructions can be found at Quick Steps to using this WIKI, use the sandbox to muck about and learn how to use a Wiki.

When you edit a page you will notice a nice little tool bar at the top of the page - this allows you to format your text in ‘wiki markup’. Wiki markup is a way of marking up text to indicate where formatting should be. It looks a bit weird to start with, but you get used to it.

More help can be found at Formatting Syntax and for clever formating (e.g. adding mind maps, bibtex, etc) look at the Adding clever things to your pages page.

• The Recent changes button shows you who has been fiddling with what recently
• The breadcrumbs bar (the area with » between » the » links » that you have » visited : this means it is easy to find your way back.
• Tables of Contents - these are generated automatically if you use the H1, H2 etc formats.
• Preview - when editing a page, preview it before saving - this means you can check out what the page looks like before committing it
• The site index button (bottom right) is quite handy.

To edit a page you need to be registered. To do this you just need to use the login or register forms.

Namespaces is just a posh word for topics or folders! It keeps things organised and is thus important!!!!

Normally you don’t have to worry about namespaces - creating a page (as described above) will create it in whatever namespace you are already in. However, if you want to start a new topic , or link to a page in a different namespace, then you will need to use namespaces.

To add something to a namespace just add ‘thenamespace:’ before the link e.g. [[evidence base:AAC]] links to AAC - the AAC part of the evidence base namespace. [[evidence base:AAC:DV4]] - a page on the DV4 on the AAC area.

This can be a bit confusing, but it is easy once you get into it, you can read more about namespaces if you like.

Checkout the Assistech wiki sitemap to look at the structure of the site. Please add to this when you create a new topic, or even a new page.

— Simon Judge 2006/10/27