THE WIKI-SUITE -- Major Power Tools for the Human Species

Posted:  8 Aug 13

1.  Purpose

1.1  To share with readers a fuller perspective on the tremendous opportunity offered by the Wikipedia Foundation to help empower our world -- one person or grouping at a time.  Fifteen of their primary FREE tools are link-listed in this article, for your convenience.

The generous spirit displayed in all of this must surely increase our pride in our species and our optimism toward a most promising destiny, together.

1.2  In the Foundation's own words:

"The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual, educational content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, a top-ten internet property."

2.  Overview

2.1  The Foundation freely offers a full and growing array of exceedingly practical intellectual tools which I have presumed to call, here, "The Wiki-Suite" and which array is link-listed below, in Section 5, with brief descriptions, in their own words.

2.2  First, for quick reference, in Section 4, I provide an "Outline of the Product-Service Mix -- FREELY Offered" -- as a convenient prelude to the more detailed descriptions that follow.

2.3  You might also be interested in previous blog articles designed to help build justified confidence in this brilliant endeavor to vastly improve the human condition -- and to help spread the word -- so that no one unknowingly loses the advantages at our very fingertips.

• WIKIPEDIA -- A Resource Well Worth Supporting
• THE RELIABILITY OF WIKIPEDIA: A Closer Look
• GREAT AMERICAN WIKNIC 2013 -- Oakland: Lake Merritt - 6/23/13/Sun/ 12:34 pm

2.4  Also, along this line, is another priceless resource, blogged as "MAJOR BREAK-THROUGH: The Kahn Academy."

2.5  Here is another useful wiki (NOT affiliated with The Foundation, but worth mentioning here) which I have also found very, very useful:  "wikiHow - How to do anything."  In their own words, here's who they are.  wikiHow is a "for-profit business [freely serving users] that focuses on accomplishing a social mission" (a hybrid organization, unlike The Wikipedia Foundation, which is totally non-profit-seeking).

3.  A Public Appeal

3.1  Everyone!  Share your knowledge and wisdom, far and wide -- and exchange and enhance these awesome tools in mutually beneficial partnership with the rest of our world.

3.2  You do have much to offer -- we all do -- for there is genius inside of each of us.  Such potent mental force is one of the profoundest, most unique gifts that life has given to our species.

3.3  WE ARE ONE – and a great one at that -- sharing the same great journey in the same great boat -- on the way to becoming better and better -- in our inevitable pursuit of perfection -- as gifted, rational, self-fulfilling beings!

3.4  For those among the living, it's our turn to discover, develop, and use our gifts to help write the next glorious chapter of human history -- for ourselves and our posterity --  wisely using any tools that will help us do the job.  It's the only chance we're ever going to get.

4.  Outline of the Product-Service Mix --FREELY Offered

These are hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation and are covered in greater detail by Section 5, below.

1. Wikipedia - Encyclopedia
2. Wictionary - Dictionary and thesaurus
3. Wikiquote -- Quotations
4. Wikibooks -- Book Authoring
5. Wikisource -- Documents
6. Wikispecies -- Species Directory
7. Wikinews -- News reports
8. Wikiversity -- Community learning
9. Wikivoyage -- Travel guide
10. Wikimedia Commons -- Media repository
11. Meta-Wiki -- Coordination 
12. Wikidata -- Knowledge Base
13. Mediawiki -- MediaWiki software (Did you know that this is a pathway to writing FREE wiki's for your groups, organizations, and selves?)
14. Bugzilla -- MediaWiki bug tracker
15. Wikimedia Labs -- MediaWiki development

There is much more, but above are the major ones – the rest will illuminate themselves on your own paths of discovery

5.  THE WIKI-SUITE

Selected excerpts from the websites

5.1  Wikipedia - Encyclopedia

• Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project operated by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on an openly editable model. 
• The name "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia. 
• Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.

5.2  Wictionary - Dictionary and thesaurus

• Welcome to the English-language Wiktionary, a collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary. 
• It aims to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English.

5.3  Wikiquote -- Quotations

• Wikiquote is a free online compendium of sourced quotations from notable people and creative works in every language, translations of non-English quotes, and links to Wikipedia for further information. 
• Visit the help page or experiment in the sandbox to learn how you can edit nearly any page right now; or go to the Log in to start contributing to Wikiquote.

5.4  Wikibooks -- Book Authoring

• Wikibooks is a collaborative book authoring website, where users from all over the world work together to write textbooks and other types of instructional books on many topics. 
• It is a Wikimedia project, operated by the same group of people who run Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation. 
• You can edit this page, and almost all pages like it, at any time. 
• That is the basic principle of Wikibooks. 
• Anyone can edit it.

Using Wikibooks

The Comprehensive Open Source Handbook for Learning Wikibooks

The purpose of [the handbook] is to guide you through your Wikibooks journey. From becoming a reader to becoming a writer and beyond, each chapter explores what you should know to make the most of your journey. (more)

Books by subject

5.5  Wikisource -- Documents

• Wikisource is an online library of free-content texts. 
• Wikisource is maintained by a community of 797,753 registered users—297 of them have made edits in the last thirty days. 
• If you want to join our community, just create an account and start editing.
• Wikisource is the free library that anyone can improve.

5.6  Wikispecies -- Species Directory

• Wikispecies is intended to be a free taxonomic reference and directory, for both the scientist and the average reader. 
• It exists as a database aggregating the classifications and genetic family tree of all species of life, from all six kingdoms. 
• However, its content on life differs from the articles on Wikipedia in that actual discussion is omitted in Wikispecies and is instead strictly replaced by the taxonomic roots of the species at hand. 
• As of August 2013, there are over 370,000 articles available at Wikispecies.
• The free species directory that anyone can edit.
• It covers Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Bacteria, Archaea, Protista and all other forms of life.
• So far we have 372,673 articles

Wikispecies is free, because life is in the public domain!

5.7  Wikinews -- News reports

Wikinews has two main types of article:

• The most common is the synthesis article. These draw on media reports from many other sources (always fully cited). It is rare for other media stories to contain all the available facts, so we provide a more rounded and detailed report. We can also strip out any bias and present a neutral point of view.

• The other type of articles is original reporting. These are first-hand news reports written by Wikinews contributors on-the-spot of news events. You can read more about this type of reporting at Wikinews: Original reporting.

What exactly Wikinews covers is explained by the Content guide. Some really good examples are available at Wikinews: Featured articles.  Wikinews is written by people like you.

Find a current topic you'd like to see Wikinews cover, 

create an account and write an article on it!

5.8  Wikiversity -- Community learning

• Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. 
• We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities. 
• To learn more about Wikiversity, try a guided tour or start editing now.

5.9  Wikivoyage -- Travel guide

• Wikivoyage (wikivoyage.org) is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide. 
• It is built in collaboration by Wikivoyagers from around the globe. 
• Wikivoyage started on 10 December 2006 and relaunched under Wikimedia on 15 January 2013.

Wikivoyage is built with the spirit of sharing knowledge that makes travel so enjoyable.

• Whenever travellers meet each other on the road, they swap info about the places they came from and ask questions about places they're going. 
• We want to make it easy to share that knowledge and let others share it; our copyleft license means that the facts you know can spread far and wide.

5.10  Wikimedia Commons -- Media repository

• Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to all. 
• It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here.

5.11  Meta-Wiki -- Coordination 

• Meta-Wiki, the global community site for the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement in general. 
• Meta-Wiki's discussions range from coordination and documentation to planning and analysis of future Wikimedia activities.

5.12  Wikidata -- Knowledge Base

• Wikidata is a free knowledge base that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike. 
• It is for data what Wikimedia Commons is for media files: it centralizes access to and management of structured data, such as interwiki references and statistical information. 
• Wikidata contains data in every language supported by the MediaWiki software.
• You can read the introduction to learn more about Wikidata.
• See Wikidata in action: View the item about Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• If you'd like to test out the Wikidata software, please use the sandbox.

5.13  Mediawiki -- MediaWiki software

(Did you know that this is a pathway to writing FREE wiki's for your groups, organizations, and selves?)

• MediaWiki is a free software open source wiki package written in PHP, originally for use on Wikipedia. 
• It is now also used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis, including this website, the home of MediaWiki.
• Use the links below to explore the site contents. 
• You'll find some content translated into other languages, but the primary documentation language is English. 
• For general questions about MediaWiki see the communication page or ask at the support desk.

5.14  Bugzilla -- MediaWiki bug tracker

• This is the bug tracker for MediaWiki and its extensions and site-specific problems on Wikimedia wikis.
• If you would like to file a bug report, please read How to report a bug for some pointers.

5.15  Wikimedia Labs -- MediaWiki development

• The production part of this wiki, also known as Wikitech, is for internal technical documentation for the Wikimedia Foundation. 
• For technical documentation of MediaWiki software, see MediaWiki.org.

There is much more, but these are the major ones – the rest will illuminate themselves on your own paths of discovery

David Nelson