Wiki Background
COMP 1010 Home > Java Fundamentals
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IntroductionThis section is meant to give to brief description of Wikis themselves along with a history of the COMP 1010 Wiki itself. The secondary function of this page is to give credit where it is due. The contributors section lists all those who gave their time to build the COMP 1010 Wiki.
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Wikis Explained
A Wiki is defined as "A collaborative website whose content can be edited by anyone who has access to it" 1. One of the more infamous Wikis on the web today is Wikipedia, which has numerous sister projects 2 such as Wiktionary and Wikibooks.
Many Wikis are powered by free MediaWiki software. MediaWiki was orginally developed by the Wikimedia Foundation for Wikipedia 3. Since MediaWiki is open source software, there are numerous variations of the original that provide extra functionality. For example, DekiWiki from MindTouch is built on the MediaWiki code, but adds some features that can be used in a corporate environment.
MediaWiki is not the only type of MediaWiki software that exists. The following have the same sort of functionality as MediaWiki, but are not based on the MediaWiki code itself.
For more information on Wikis and Wiki software, check out the Wikipedia page on Wikis.
History of the COMP 1010 Wiki
The COMP 1010 Wiki began an idea from a computer science instructor, Christina Penner. The idea was to replace the current COMP 1010 textbook with a Wiki. As the instructor for the Technical Communications course, COMP 3040 along with COMP 1010, it made sense for her to lead her COMP 3040 students on a new assignment.
What started out as a course assignment quickly became a serious project for many of the COMP 3040 students. The students felt as though they were sharing their knowledge with those sharing the same goals for university. The Wiki also allowed third and fourth year students to change the COMP 1010 course as they see fit. Former COMP 1010 students could add content that they believed to be relevant to their start in computer science, or clarify subjects that they believed to be explained poorly. As the COMP 3040 class worked more on helping new computer scientists, the theme of the Wiki became "Written by Students, for Students".
Currently, the COMP 3040 student from the Fall 2007 term are continuing the work that began before them. The goal for this Wiki is to replace the COMP 1010 textbook by the start of the 2008-2009 school year.
Contributors
The following people have taken the time to contribute to the COMP 1010 Wiki.
COMP 3040 (Winter 2012) Students
COMP 3040 (Fall 2007) Students
Resources
Wikipedia Home Page
Wiktionary Home Page
Wikibooks Home Page
Wikipedia Page on Wikipedia
COMP 1010 Homepage
COMP 3040 Homepage
University of Manitoba Page for Christina Penner
References
1 Dictionary.com Definition of Wiki
2 Wikipedia Sister Projects
3 MediaWiki Home Page
