General information about Wikis

A Wiki (WikiWikiWeb) is a tool where different authors can write texts together. In this context there are two principles:

1. Anyone can change any text.
2. Structures and reprimands between texts are created simply by naming the page name.

The best way to understand this is to imagine a WikiWikiWeb as a collection of memos which are mutually linked and which can be read, supplemented and changed by many people.

How you can participate in a Wiki

In Stud.IP a Wiki always begins with a start page, which is termed WikiWikiWeb. You can read this page as you would an ordinary web page and follow the links on this page.

There are two types of links: Those which lead to an already existing page and those which lead to a new, as yet non-existent page. The latter are distinguished by a (?);

Clicking on a link for a page which has not yet been set up has the same effect as a click on the Edit button, which is located at the top of every page. An input field appears in which either the existing text of a page has been entered or which — for new pages — is still blank. You can edit or supplement this text and in the process use text formatting and smileys, which you are already familiar with, e.g., from the Forum or Chat room.

The text is adopted when you click on Send. Before you delete text passages, please consider whether you really want to delete other people’s work or whether you would like to restructure the page instead. If you do not wish to keep your changes, click on Cancel.

If more than one person attempts to change a page at the same time, a warning appears. Unfortunately, Stud.IP cannot determine whether two user are really editing a text at the same time or whether someone has changed to another web page, switched off his computer, etc. after opening the edit window. Consequently, a warning for others is sent for thirty minutes after the beginning of editing until the page is sent or the editing terminated in each case.

Therefore, save your changes regularly by clicking on Send. If you change a page although you were given a warning, you do this at your own risk, i.e. your changes could be overwritten and then end up in an older version.

As in the Forum, you can only change or delete your own Postings without a trace under certain preconditions. If you change your text within 30 minutes, and in the meantime no other user has worked on the Wiki page, only the overall changes will be saved as versions, not the intermediate steps.