MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide: Install, manage, and customize your MediaWiki installation Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Although a comparison cannot be made, because of the lack of competition (discarding the online help at MediaWiki.org) the MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide is a good and must have reference for anyone working with MediaWiki as administrator but also as user, offering almost anything one would want to know to start off with, to maintain and to customise and even hack a wiki installation. For those wanting to go a bit further with writing real PHP code for creating extensions, custom wiki markup and special pages, the book offers some nice code examples to work with and to modify to one's needs.
The book could have benefited from somewhat richer content, such as more references to additional sources on the Internet and especially something like break-out boxes presenting experiences from admins of major wiki real life implementations. Next to that it appears that some more time should have been spend on a better index, correcting language, typos and structuring in general.
My book rating: 8
To summarise: the pros and cons
Pros:
+ Almost everything you will need for a basic MediaWiki installation, its maintenance and some customisation is available in this book. It is a complete reference for admins but certainly also for users, that would like some basic understanding of MediaWiki.
+ Very nice and easy to grasp examples of skin customisation and creation (I am no PHP expert!).
+ Good example on creating an article rating system extension and accompanying special page. With this knowledge and some additional PHP you will be able to try out a couple of your extension idea's quite easily I guess.
+ There is a nice bonus chapter (11) presenting 7 extensions and some support on how to install them.
+ A book is so much easier than an online source! Of course this is not a pro for this book per se, but for others as well.
Cons:
+ Missing 1: some practical case studies of real life MediaWiki implementations and preferably interviews with the admins of the practise of maintaining a wiki
+ Missing 2: More attention to anti-vandalism tools out there, dedicated to preventing rather than cleaning-up.
+ Missing 3: A good index: the index at the end of the book is way too brief to be of real value for someone trying to find something back in the book.
+ Missing 4: Too little in-text references and no references section in the book, for further reading or information, like most important forums for those looking for help (like the MediaWiki Mailing List Archive and MWusers.com).
+ Sometimes the English used suggests a lack of some decent editorial oversight (or shall I call it charming?)
+ Chapter 1, describing wiki's in relation to weblogs, forums and CMS systems and the position in Web 2.0 is not really convincing. Furthermore, although alternative wiki systems are briefly mentioned, no real and "honest" comparison is made.
+ Images and tables are not numbered, which is not good for readability.
+ The typographical distinction between paragraph and sub-paragraph could have been better


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This book covers the open-source MediaWiki wiki engine from installation and getting started through structuring your collaborative website, advanced formatting, images, multimedia, security, and managing users to backing up, restoring, and migrating your installation and creating new MediWiki templates. The author, Mizanur Rahman, is a Senior Software Engineer at ReliSource Technologies. The book has a fast-paced, friendly tutorial style and uses a fun example to teach all of MediaWiki's key features. This book is for competent computer users who want to run MediaWiki. They should have some knowledge of HTML and have used a wiki before. No PHP knowledge is required for most of the book, although some chapters at the end include some PHP code.

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Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful Review

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(More customer reviews)Anyone interested in using the Internet to help improve the way government works should read this book. Noveck presents an excellent background describing the problems with existing government decision-making processes, a case study of the Peer-to-patent process she helped develop and recommendations for developing effective Internet based applications.
The book is well written and edited, easy to read and full of examples that will spur your creativity. I read it quickly and thought it was very good, but as I go back and re-read sections I think it's extraordinary.

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Wiki Government shows how to bring innovation to government. In explaining how to enhance political institutions with the power of networks, it offers a fundamental rethinking of democracy in the digital age. Collaborative democracy-government of the people, by the people, for the people-is an old dream. Today, Wiki Government shows how technology can make that dream a reality. In this thought-provoking book, Beth Simone Noveck illustrates how collaborative democracy strengthens public decisionmaking by connecting the power of the many to the work of the few. Equally important, she provides a step-by-step demonstration of how collaborative democracy can be designed, opening policymaking to greater participation. "Wiki Government" tells the story behind one of the most dramatic public sector innovations in recent years - inviting the public to participate in the patent examination process. Patent examiners usually work in secret, cut off from essential information and racing against the clock to master arcane technical claims. The Peer-to-Patent project radically transformed this process by allowing anyone with Internet access to collaborate with the agency in reviewing patent applications. "Wiki Government" describes how a far-flung team of technologists, lawyers, and policymakers pried open a tradition-bound agency's doors. Noveck explains how she brought both fiercely competitive companies and risk-averse bureaucrats on board. She discusses the design challenges the team faced in creating software to distill online collaboration into useful expertise, not just rants or raves. And she explains how law, policy, and technology can be revamped to help government work in more open and participatory ways in a wide range of policy arenas, including education and the environment.

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Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools (Wordware Applications Library) Review

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(More customer reviews)As an independent consultant working exclusively from home, all of my teams are virtual, even if they are located a few miles away. I bought this book not to enhance my relationships with those team members but rather to help me develop two training classes on this book's subtitle: "wikis, blogs, and other collaborative tools." While I pored over chapters 12-18 attempting to organize my own thoughts, I enjoyed the authors' writing style and found the depth appropriate for a high-level understanding of each topic. I am now reading the remaining chapters, sure that I will uncover a nugget or two that will help me in my daily work life.

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Virtual collaborative team environments face unique challenges because co-workers are not able to interact in person. Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools provides practical advice for managers of distributed teams who must design the internal systems and meet deadlines with a diverse team, and for team members who want to develop and maintain professional relationships. To address these needs, this book is divided into two parts. Part I discusses the basics of team and project management, including team dynamics, communication, and project evaluation, with particular emphasis on the unique challenges of virtual teams. Part II covers the types of tools currently available for collaboration, such as wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, and more, and describes the different feature sets of each, as well as their differences and similarities. As part of their collaborative effort, the authors used a wiki, which they have opened to give readers an opportunity to see an example of a real-life wiki at work and participate in a community with the authors and other readers.

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