Customer comments on this selection.
 Not worth the price or the informational value for project work, but well-written and generally interesting
I originally purchased this book to help with a project I was doing for the IEEE 60th Anniversary Website Competition. Our website was (logically) Wiki-based, so I had hoped this book could provide some fundamentals for Wiki-website design and implementation.
br /
br /I think I unfortunately mis-understood or was mis-lead by some of the reviews and descriptions about this book. This book is not about design and implementation but more about the history and anecdotal usefulness a Wiki can bring to an organization/the world at large and additionally some very generic wiki web-programming examples.
br /
br /If you're looking for something to "really" help you with a project from a design or implementation standpoint, please look elsewhere.
br /
br /I give this product 4-stars because the way it is written and the majority of information included is pretty well-done, and would be useful if one were to only be interested in the history of Wikis...but I don't know who would possibly buy this book being interested in solely the HISTORY of Wikis rather than using them for practical purposes or functionality. You could get this (or similar) books at a library, or simply look the information up online...in a WIKI!
br /
br /I'd give it 3.x stars if I could - just wanted to be clear on the reasoning behind the rating so that hopefully this synopsis/review will be helpful to others.
 Flawed book for administrators
This is book is definitely intended for administrators. Witness about the 30 pages on how to use a wiki. How to install: 36 pages. Structuring the content, hacking the code and understanding what you find: 140 pages. Administration tools: 55 pages. There are some examples of wiki use in education and business. The included CD has mangled code. Even after writing a perl program to convert, it looked like it was at least trying to work but wasn't.
 Not what I had hoped for
I was hoping for a lot of examples, hints, and tricks on how to create and format a wiki. While the book gave some hints on formatting, this book is more for someone who is administering a wiki site and not a regular user. If you just want tips and techniques on creating a personal or work wiki article, you can get more help from the wikipedia on the internet and you'll save some money too.
 This was probably a good book in 2001...
A quick skim through this book shows that it is thoroughly outdated. While it was probably good in 2001 when it was published, its not very useful now if you're using the current generation of Wikis, i.e., MediaWiki.
br /
br /I am using MediaWiki and found it pretty useless.
good introduction to wiki concepts but assumes perl
A "Wiki" is a web site, where every page is editable, by anybody with a browser. It may seem wierd, but it's a very powerful, and successful, idea. The most well-known Wiki has been running since 1994 with thousands of users. pThis book covers how and why Wiki works, case studies of use, and installing, configuring, and customizing an open-source Wiki supplied on CD. If you know a little about Wiki, and want more, this is a great book. It's sprinkled with practical advice and gives real code examples for enhancements. It can also be inspirational and has got me buzzing with ideas. It has a fine index and all the "tips" are listed for easy reference. pWiki's obscurity is its greatest weakness, though. If you have never heard the term "Wiki", you would never think to pick up this book. I also found that the assumption of Perl in the example software sections clashed with the language independent nature of the theory and case-study sections. And beware that the book ignores or glosses over a few things which require more effort than in other systems. pIf you find it clumsy or slow to get things on a web site, if you are looking for an easy way to let people collaborate, or if you just want to make sense of all your scattered notes, read this book.
|
