According to the advertising I have seen with some website hosting programs, it is possible to have a Wiki setup installed directly on a subdirectory on one’s website. After that setup is installed, it is then possible to create the Wiki pages the same way you would do on the regular Wiki website.
For those who are familiar with all of this, I have some questions as follows:
(For the sake of discussion, let’s suppose I am creating my own private Wiki of in regard to a certain group of topics centering on the geology of Saturn’s moons …)
(1) Can I restrict access to this private Wiki so that only I and selected other persons have “editing” rights? (EXPLANATION: I am not willing to spend the time to make corrections to various items of nonsense which members of the general public might post, or to delete “new topic pages” which they might add which we might consider unnecessary or undesirable … )
(2) I would prefer to have some sort of notification setup, whereby people could advise me of “suggested corrections” and I (and my associates) could add those into the Wiki pages if and when we decided to do so. Is this possible?
(3) Is there any way to go to the online Wiki database en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and directly copy various pages of data into my own private Wiki in some sort of automatic fashion, or does that have to be done by hand? If I copy some pages from the established online Wiki, is that considered copyright infringement, or is all of this stuff in the public domain?
I’ve only ever read wikis so I don’t know much about them.
Yes, wikipedia lets some people make changes, while the others can’t
You could use the discussion pages for this
I don’t know if there is an automated way to copy them, but it is allowed, wikipedia is published under the GPL licence, so you have the right to copy it, but you must pass on the same rights for your site. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights If you want to copy a whole page, I would just link to it. It will be more up to date.
I thought the whole point of the way the Wiki thing worked was so that it CANNOT be used as a private hobby horse kind of thing.
Surely if it could be used in way you suggest, it would be chock-full of the most hare-brained nonsense set forth as so-called “fact,” which would seem to defeat the purpose, no?
[quote=“sandman”]I thought the whole point of the way the Wiki thing worked was so that it CANNOT be used as a private hobby horse kind of thing.
Surely if it could be used in way you suggest, it would be chock-full of the most hare-brained nonsense set forth as so-called “fact,” which would seem to defeat the purpose, no?[/quote]I think you’re confusing Wikipedia with wiki software.
[quote=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki”]A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. These wiki websites are often also referred to as wikis; for example, Wikipedia is one of the best known wikis.[1] Wikis are being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work.”
…
Many wiki communities are private, particularly within enterprises. They are often used as internal documentation for in-house systems and applications. The “open to everyone”, all-encompassing nature of Wikipedia is a significant factor in its growth, while many other wikis are highly specialized.[/quote]
So a wiki is just one kind of content management system. You can certainly configure one to allow only trusted users to post and edit articles. And if Hartzell wanted to be the only trusted user on his site, I guess he could do that though I’m not quite sure why he’d choose a wiki in that case. They’re supposed to be about collaboration, though they don’t have to be as open as Wikipedia.
A lot of good responses already, but hears my stab at the three questions:
Yes, you can restrict access to a private wiki to a select cadre of wiki admins. You could furthermore have different levels of access rights for different people.
You can set up many wiki software so that no edits will be posted to the website before they have been approved by an admin (you or whoever holds such an access right). Unless there are a large number of edits being made daily, this is probably a feasible thing to do.
You can use any one of a number of freely available wiki solutions, but maybe you want to try [mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki]MediaWiki[/url], which is used for Wikipedia among others, and available for free download on the link I gave. Instructions on how to import pages from other wikis such as Wikipedia are on the MediaWiki wiki, though they require some scripting.
As mentioned by BFM, Wikipedia has already granted you the right to mirror articles on your own site. If you make changes to the articles, then you must give access to those articles. The legal jargon is all on the link he gave; basically it gives you many rights but entreats you to extend the same rights to others.
To better determine which wiki software you should use, it would be necessary to know more info, such as the computer(s) on which the wiki will be stored, whether on your own server, on a service provider’s servers, or whatever.