CyberSelection

January 2007

PB wiki

http://pbwiki.com

by Susanne Bjorner

Just as I was trying to decide whether to feature JotSpot ( http://www.jot.com ) or PB wiki ( http://pbwiki.com ) as the CyberSelection to start 2007, Google bought JotSpot. Did that make the decision easier? Well, no. It did convince me, however, that suggesting wiki software as a worktool was a good choice.

Of course you know about wikis, and you undoubtedly have your own opinion about Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.org ), one of the first and probably still the most famous user of wiki software. Wikipedia now appears in ten language editions from its home page, though more than 250 editions are linked at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias . Its content was legitimized in a sense by Nature magazine's head-to-head comparison of scientific articles in Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica in December 2005. An updated report is still at http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html .

But wikis are more than Wikipedia. A number of incidents lately have turned my attention from the consideration of the content of various wiki applications to the usefulness of wiki software for work activities in my practice and, potentially, in yours.

First, I read that the EuroDocs ( http://eurodocs.lib.byu.edu/ ) collection of primary historical documents from Western Europe had recently adopted a wiki format. Then, I saw that Pearson Publishing will soon issue a book that is being written through a wiki. Key authors from the Wharton Business School and Sloan School of Management are already collaborating ( http://www.wearesmarter.org ) on a project showing how collaborative communites will change business.

Jumping in to Wikis

But what moved me to action was simply an invitation to go to a friend's new wiki and read an overview of a program that she had recently attended. And, incidentally, the first one to create a new page in her wiki would get a prize. Within minutes of that posting to all in her office, someone had incorporated a chart of next month's kitchen duties, and almost everyone else had revised the assignments! I didn't get the prize, unless you count the fact that my name doesn't appear on the kitchen duty sheet.

I took a more conservative approach and added a few comments to the conference report. Then I created a new page, dropped in a 200-word piece of text and created a link to an external page on the Web. It worked, and all in the space of a half hour.

That wiki was on JotSpot, which in July had expanded the traditional concept of wiki, which allows anyone to view, write and edit a Web page without knowing HTML, to include spreadsheets, file cabinets, and photo pages--sort of a wiki Office suite. JotSpot, the lore goes, started in 2004 when its cofounders, Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, got fed up trying to collaborate through emails and attachments.

I've done a mighty share of emailing and attaching over the years, so I too was ready to try something new. Two key insights had sunk into my head with my first active wiki experience: First, I didn't need to host a wiki site myself in order to collaborate on a document. Second, we don't have to share our work with the world--wikis can be private, too.

JotSpot

The next time I got an assignment to edit a very long essay by an author who lives 4000 miles away, I suggested that we collaborate via a wiki. The author was agreeable, so I hopped over to JotSpot, signed up for a free account, and created a page.

Contrary to most other wiki software, JotSpothas a WYSIWYG onscreen editor that mimics Microsoft Word. I recognized the toolbar symbols for boldface, italic, and underscore type, and I could easily figure out the one for strikethrough. There are icons for justification, bulleted and numbered lists, indents, outdents, text color, background color, and inserting images, tables, and horizontal rules--and the all-important Undo and Redo. It's not a complete set of Word capabilties, but it has the most important ones.

But I ran into problems. In fact, I had ignored one when I posted the text from Microsoft Word. The first paragraphs looked fine and held the italics and boldface of the original. But further on down in the manuscript, all text had inexplicably changed to boldface. Perhaps 10,000 words is too long to fit on one page? I decided not to worry about that until I got there. I returned to the top and started editing: reading and making minor adjustments in wording, punctuation, and paragraph order. That all worked fine. I knew this would be a multiple-day project, but soon, I thought, I could invite the author to view my edited version and accept the edits or make changes of her own.

One of the beauties of wikis, of course, is that revisions are automatically tracked. JotSpot allows either a one-page view, showing additions or deletions in colors, or a side-by-side view of any two versions. You can click and go back to any earlier version. Just the thing for editing a work in progress.

Before I finished that editing project, I also tried to transfer an FAQ that I had written to JotSpot. And here I really ran into formatting problems. It seemed as though just plopping a Word file in was not going to work. Regular text became boldface, some answers couldn't get saved, all of a sudden, text would change into center justification. Not worth the effort, I thought. Maybe JotSpotis good for collaborating on text as you write it, but it's not working for me to drop almost-complete text into it.

I went looking for another wiki hosting site and was reminded of PB wiki.

PB wiki

PB wiki claims it's as easy to use as making a peanut butter sandwich. And it's free, too, though there are plenty of opportunites to upgrade to silver, gold or platinum ($4.95 - $19.95 per month). Free gets you unlimited pages, revisions, and comments, 10 MB of storage for files, a secure login over SSL, snapshot PDF backups of pages, and RSS/Atom feed capability.

It took me just a minute to set up my first PB wiki. I was delighted to discover, when I clicked the "New page" button, that there is a preformatted template for FAQs. It wasn't quite as simple as copying and pasting the text from my Word file (I had to add a few exclamation marks (!) to the questions, and I lost my two-level outline format). But an hour later, the page was usable and presentable enough for me to show it to my client. In addition to multiple templates, there are help pages with editing tips. Editing tips are necessary, because there is no WYSIWYG here. I was disconcerted when I had to use symbols like asterisks for boldface and apostrophes for italic, in front of and after words, but I remembered: I can do this--I learned WordStar in the distant past.

One disadvantage to PB wiki for free is limited access privileges. Your free wiki can be public or private, but if it is private, everyone needs a password even to read it--and then they can also edit. Owners can be notified of all edits instantaneously, but more refined read/write options would be nice, and they are available with the premium upgrades.

I've created a few additional PB wikis already. If you create one, think twice at the question of what is its purpose. Your answer will determine which set of templates you are offered. The FAQ template I was offered when I said my wiki was "experimental" was not an option when I chose "education" as my purpose--but then I found templates for a syllabus, classroom, or group project.

... and the CyberSelection is ...

So in the end it was an easy decison to choose PB wiki as the CyberSelection, but there was an awful lot of work to go through to get to that point. I was attracted by the WYSIWYG editing that JotSpot offered, but either it didn't work or the learning curve was too high. I spent more time on JotSpot researching this article, but my time on PB wiki was more productive. And guess what: PB wiki's informative November newsletter announced that a new, MS-Word type WYSIWYG editor is coming soon.

But what will acquisition by Google do to JotSpot? New accounts are temporarily closed while JotSpot migrates to Google's systems (existing wikis are open as usual). It's not known how long it will take for JotSpot to open again, and what improvements will be made. But by the time you read this, there may be a "Google wiki."

So I'm loading a version of this article onto http://cyberskeptic.pbwiki.com. If I stick to my plan, I will improve and update it between the time I write and you read this. I've given editor Sheri Lanza a password to edit, and by the time the article is in print, we should have figured out read-only access privileges, though your comments are always appreciated. Why not log on and see if anything has changed since this went to press?

Susanne Bjørner, who provides editorial services by contract to publishers, librarians, and researchers, finds it expensive to buy peanut butter where she lives in Spain, but has had a strong craving lately. Contact her at bjorner@earthlink.net.