COHOWiki:About
From COHOWiki
[edit] About this WIki
On July 9th 2008 I sent a letter to the main COHO email list explaining the creation of this wikiwikiweb. I am including that email here for reference and for those who missed it.
[edit] Original email from TimH on July 9th 2008:
As was mentioned, we now have a Wiki. For those who don't know, a Wiki is a collection of interconnected web pages that are created and edited by anyone. Generally, some type of defined community is involved (in this case, COHO). See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Most of the pages are set to be editable by anyone without a login of any kind. Some pages will probably require a login (which anyone can create for themselves), and some pages will only be editable by a "Sysop". I would ask that when you create an account, you give yourself a username that consists of your first name and last initial (capitalized normally); for example my user name is TimH, Brian Marlowe is BrianM, you get the idea... It helps to have a convention that can be mostly counted on.
On every page (that you have rights to edit) you will see a tab that says "edit". If you have something to add, a fix to make, an update, or just a hankering, you can go to the markup for that page (which is pretty simple to learn) and make changes. There are some buttons on every edit page that can help you get started. You can also look at the standard markup rules here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting#Text_formatting_markup
Another good way to learn how to edit is to just look at the existing markup of any page. The COHO Wiki is running MediaWiki, which is the same software that runs Wikipedia. So anyone who is familiar with Wikipedia should be good to go.
Once you have a login, you can start by creating a page about yourself by clicking your username at the top of the screen. When clicking on a link for a page that does not exist you will be prompted to create it. This leads to one way in which new pages get created. Lets say you wanted to post one of your recipes... You could edit your own page to create a link to the recipe page that doesn't exist yet, then click on the link after you save the page.
I added a recipe in the above manner that you can get to be starting at my user page: http://wiki.cohomebrewers.org/User:TimH Also note that the recipe is in a catagory called "Recipe". This is another way to help organize the data. If you create a recipe it is a good idea to add it to that catagory. To learn how, you can look at the markup for the recipe I added... (or look here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category)
There are currently pages for Hop Madness and The Bend Brew Fest. If you have information to share for either of these, please do!
Don't worry too much about structure at this point; I'll be recruiting a couple people to help keep things glued together.
More info here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents
Some of you are undoubtedly saying to yourselves right now "I just don't get it". That's OK. Most people will just read what's up there and be informed. Participation in editing and organizing isn't required for the Wiki to be useful to you. Also, if you make mistakes, pages can be reverted to older versions of themselves pretty easily.
--TimH
