Wiki-based projects

Examples of good wiki-based projects (primarily for participation)

Wikipedia

1. Name of the project : Wikipedia
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia
3. Languages available : 270+
4. Licences (Open source or not) : CC BY SA 3.0 /GFDL
5. Reference organisation : Wikimedia Foundation
6. Technology based / developers : MediaWiki
7. Description and history : Founded in 2001, Wikipedia is a freely licence encyclopedia which seeks to give access to knowledge to all human being on that planet. As of early 2012, over 20 millions articles in over 270 languages. That's THE wiki reference.
8. Links: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : Open for participation to all. Suitable for teenager and adult participation. Broad topics.

Wikibooks

1. Name of the project : Wikibooks
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : Wikibooks is an open-content textbooks collection
3. Languages available : 50+
4. Licences (Open source or not) : CC BY SA 3.0 and/or GFDL
5. Reference organisation : Wikimedia Foundation
6. Technology based / developers : MediaWiki
7. Description and history : Created in 2003. While some books are original, others began as text copied over from other sources of free content textbooks found on the Internet.
8. Links: http://www.wikibooks.org/
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : Open for participation to all. Suitable for teenager and adult participation. Broad topics. Opportunity for group-based collaboration on a given book

Wikitravel

1. Name of the project : Wikitravel
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : Wikitravel is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide.
3. Languages available : 22
4. Licences (Open source or not) : cc by sa 3.0
5. Reference organisation : Internet Brands (a for profit company)
6. Technology based / developers : mediawiki
7. Description and history : Created in 2003 by Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins. The wiki is editable by everyone
8. Links: http://www.wikitravel.org
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : Wikitravel is a very wikipedia-like project with a very specific focus. It is open to editing to the public and its content may be freely reused. Though the English based version is the most developped, it also exists in other languages. It provides an interesting wiki for beginners as most people would have something to write in the area covered by this wiki.

Appropedia

1. Name of the project : Appropedia
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : Appropedia is a public wiki for collaborative solutions in sustainability, appropriate technology and poverty reduction.
3. Languages available : 40
4. Licences (Open source or not) : cc by sa
5. Reference organisation : Appropedia Foundation, registered U.S. 501(c)3
6. Technology based / developers : mediawiki, semantic mediawiki
7. Description and history : Created in 2006 by Lonny Grafman, Aaron Antrim and Gabriel Krause. Merged end of 2006 with WikiGreen.
8. Links: http://www.appropedia.org
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : Appropedia is a very wikipedia-like project with a very specific focus. It is open to editing to the public and its content may be freely reused. Though the English based version is the most developped, it also exists in other languages

Ekopedia

1. Name of the project : Ekopedia
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : Ekopedia is a project dedicated in providing answers and spreading practical knowledge related to environmental sustainability. The goal is to help everyone become more independent and establish the foundation necessary to build a better world.
3. Languages available : 7 langages
4. Licences (Open source or not) : cc by sa
5. Reference organisation : Ekopedia Foundation. Created in 2007
6. Technology based / developers : mediawiki
7. Description and history : Created in Quebec in 2002 under the name Newlimits.org, the project was initially in French and under the Free Art Licence. It was using TWiki but migrated to MediaWiki in 2004 so as to facilitate content sharing with other projects such as Appropedia and Wikipedia. Ekopedia articles are organized around 12 topics in order to meet the basics needs of people : Birth, Education, Food, Lodging, Clothing, Art and craft, Thinking, Living together, Health and care, Travel, Play and Communication.
8. Links:http://www.ekopedia.org/
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : Ekopedia is a very wikipedia-like project. It is open to editing to the public and its content may be freely reused.

Vikidia

1. Name of the project : Vikidia
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : an encyclopedia for children. The site focuses on presenting articles readable by children from eight to thirteen years of age,
3. Languages available : French and Spanish
4. Licences (Open source or not) : GFLD and cc by sa
5. Reference organisation : Non profit association Vikidia
6. Technology based / developers : mediawiki
7. Description and history : Created by Mathias Damour. The site is now run by a French Non profit association (association loi 1901). It is open to editing to the public and its content may be freely reused. Vikidia encourages use in the classroom for school projects and research. Various schools in France, Belgium and Quebec have involved Vikidia in their curriculums. Many contributors of Vikidia are also participants of Wikipedia. Wikimedia France is a member of Vikidia association. 
8. Links:http://www.vikidia.org
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : Vikidia is a very wikipedia-like project but dedicated to 8-13 and is interesting for classroom experiments.

Minecraft Wiki

1. Name of the project : Minecraft Wiki
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : The ultimate source on information about the game : Minecraft.
3. Languages available : a dozen languages
4. Licences (Open source or not) : cc by nc sa 3.0
5. Reference organisation : Created by "citricsquid"  in 2009. Now hosted by a private company. Probably owned by Mojang, the company producing the game
6. Technology based / developers : mediawiki
7. Description and history : created in 2009, this wiki is an active place where players of the game Minecraft build an encyclopedia of the game. Best practices, FAQ, updates, news, events, gameplay information and external links to other sites about Minecraft form the core of this wiki. Open for edit to anyone.
8. Links:http://www.minecraftwiki.net
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : playful place to edit and study an editing community on a "light" topic.

Examples of good wiki-based projects (primarily for observations or sources)

MeatballWiki

1. Name of the project : MeatballWiki
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : MeatballWiki is a wiki dedicated to online communities, network culture and hypermedia
3. Languages available : English
4. Licences (Open source or not) : ?
5. Reference organisation : Sunir Shah
6. Technology based / developers : hacked-up version UseModWiki
7. Description and history : Founded in 2000 by Sunir Shah (prior to Wikipedia). It began as a fork from the original WikiWikiWeb created by Ward Cunningham, in order to provide a place to have discussions about Wiki outside of the original WikiWikiWeb.Its original goal was to focus on collaborative hypermedia, but current topics range from intellectual property to cyberpunk to the confusion of URIs.The wiki is editable by everyone but is no more active as of 2012. Its content is nevertheless preserved and constitute a very interesting database about wiki culture. The original intent of MeatballWiki was to offer observations and opinions about wikis and their online communities, with the intent of helping online communities, culture and hypermedia. Being a community about communities, MeatballWiki has become the launching point for other wiki-based projects and a general resource for broader wiki concepts and has reached "cult status". It describes the general tendencies observed on wikis and other on-line communities, for example the life cycles of wikis and people's behavior on them.
8. Links: http://meatballwiki.org
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : General resource for broader wiki concepts. Runs on a very early software which is interesting to show as a starting point to learners.

Scholarpedia

1. Name of the project : Scholarpedia
2. Brief description of the goal of the project :a peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia focusing on the fields of computational neuroscience, dynamic systems, computational intelligence, physics and astrophysics.
3. Languages available : English
4. Licences (Open source or not) : mixed licencing
5. Reference organisation : Created by Eugene M. Izhikevich
6. Technology based / developers : mediawiki with features more commonly associated with open-access online academic journals.
7. Description and history : Created by Eugene M. Izhikevich. Articles are written by experts, either invited by the editor-in-chief or other curators, or selected by a public election. As of May 2009, the list of authors included four Fields medalists and sixteen Nobel Prize winners. Registered users must provide their full real name, and a recognised affiliation to an academic institution. Only registered users can edit an article, and those edits are subject to approval by the curator of the article, who is typically the author. Users have a scholar index attribute which is incremented or decremented by various activities and which affects the user's capabilities on the website.
8. Links:http://www.scholarpedia.org
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : Scholarpedia is a peer-reviewed encyclopedia which may appeal to researchers. Its unusual model is of interest for the sake of model comparison and as an example of semi-open and peer-reviewed wiki-based projects

Jurispedia

1. Name of the project : Jurispedia
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : an encyclopedia of academic law
3. Languages available : Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish and Dutch (possibly more)
4. Licences (Open source or not) : cc nc sa 2.0
5. Reference organisation : Hosted by several universities in Vietnam, Netherlands, Canada, Germany, France and South Africa
6. Technology based / developers : mediawiki and semantic mediawiki
7. Description and history : Created in 2004 at the initiative of several universities. Participants must register but participation is open to everyone.
8. Links:http://www.jurispedia.org/
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : interesting experience of a totally decentralized wiki, with good content. But also an example of an inactive wiki

Kinesiology

1. Name of the project : Kinesiology
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : the source for information related to sports medicine, injury prevention, and fitness training.
3. Languages available : English
4. Licences (Open source or not) : CC BY SA 3.0
5. Reference organisation : Crescenta Valley High School
6. Technology based / developers : Wikispaces
7. Description and history : This wiki is created and maintained by students in the Kinesiology program at Crescenta Valley High School. No more active
8. Links:http://kinesiology.wikispaces.com/
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : example of a wiki created by students. Example of a wiki on wikispaces

WikiEducator

1. Name of the project : WikiEducator
2. Brief description of the goal of the project : an international online community project for the collaborative development of learning materials, which educators are free to reuse, adapt and share without restriction.
3. Languages available : English
4. Licences (Open source or not) : CC BY SA 3.0
5. Reference organisation : Owned by community and supported by OER Foundation
6. Technology based / developers : MediaWiki
7. Description and history : Created by Wayne Mackintosh. WikiEducator was launched in 2006 and is supported by the non-profit Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation. A variety of learning resources are available on WikiEducator: direct instructional resources such as lesson plans and full courses, as well as learning-support resources, such as individual school portals and funding proposals.
8. Links:http://wikieducator.org/Main_Page
9. Special features matching with wiki-skills project proposal / possibles educational uses (with a very brief description) : based on a wiki and providing learning materials

WikiMatrix

A private initiative from Germany, WikiMatrix is the meeting point for all those who want to compare all wiki engines. The most popular feature of the website is a comparison tool of the selected Wikis in a side-by-side table. A search engine and a Choice Wizard further support the visitor in identifying which wiki engine would be the best fit for his project. A forum is available to ask questions and discuss everything Wiki. Developers may ask for the wiki engine to be added to the WikiMatrix website. 

Last, professionals  ("wiki experts") are welcome to list their services (consulting, training, set up, customizing etc.) in a marketplace.

www.wikimatrix.org