John Naughton

I originally am from the Garden State. In 89, I moved to Florida, where I reside to this day in a small country town. Now I don't fully understand how I arrived at this page just simply because I used my real name; I'm sure as time goes on I will find out why. I have chosen to give the real McCoy here, now what must I do to go on with learning about Wikis?

I remember reading something about your name, like doing this is what I read: "--JohnNaughton" now let's see if I am understanding this properly.

My observance of the wiki so far is yes it is incredibly quick. Now that I have a page, I am assuming this to be "my page". What else can you do with wiki? -- JohnNaughton

Hi John, and welcome to WardsWiki. If you want to understand things quickly, you need to be a bit more specific in your questions. People here will be happy to help, but it's tough when we don't really understand what you're asking. Have you looked at NewUserPages?

WardsWiki is pretty overwhelming to start with. There's a lot here, including the WikiSocialNorms. Give it time, contribute a little here and there, and you'll get the most out of it.

Thank you. I will have another look at the NewUserPages? I guess what I need to know is this here just to use as a communications tool or eventually can I make my own wiki? Or am I going too fast already? Just curiousity I guess, I love to communicate, ever since I started using a PC, which is about 1 year now. I had started on AOL for about 6 months out of that year, not knowing any better. But eventually left it to go on further as I developed a real urgency to learn something about the way in which computers work. Till this day I haven't lost my appetite or my being consumed by all that computers have to offer.

I will be going on to college this fall, at the ripe age of "51", yes I am an older fellow, but if I had this hunger back in the day or even just 10 years ago, I think I have what it takes to contribute something of substance by now I would think I would be contributing if I had, had the experience of those 10 years. But considering all things I am happy with what I have accomplished so far, not blowing my own horn, just comfortable in realizing that if you don't venture out you will not learn anything, which is applied in my daily life. Plus so far the hospitality on here has been overwhelming. Fast answers very quickly. So thankyou for your response so fast, I will get on with it. One thing I would like to know is can I save this page and how do you do it? Or do you have to re-create one everytime?

-- JohnNaughton

Congratulations on going back to college - I think it's great when people take the opportunity to learn at every stage.

To explain a little more, the term wiki is used in more than one way. It's a specific technology, it's a website that uses that technology, or it's a community of people that use a specific wiki web site. I'll explain each of these very briefly, starting with the middle one.

Where we are now (in some sense) is a web site that is editable by all and sundry. The owner of this specific web site is WardCunningham, and he has made available this resource for people to use. It was originally intended to house discussions and documentation about computer programming, specifically People, Programming and Patterns, although it has spread somewhat. You don't need to save pages, or recreate them. Anything you type goes live and can be read and edited by others immediately. This page will now remain until someone deletes it, but by convention home pages are generally left unmolested by others.

All are welcome here, although there are some WikiSocialNorms. The people attracted by the original purpose of this site tend to try to keep to the topic, and so occasionally things get deleted when they are deemed OffTopic. Some OffTopic pages remain because they are of general interest to the wider programming community, but that has generally been the exception.

The openness of the site has generated a community of people using it. There are personalities here, and interactions have sprung up because of that. As with any family there are tensions and disagreements, as well as collaboration and constructive work.

Generally speaking, if you want to start your own wiki web site you are discouraged from doing it here. Read the pages on WikiSquatting and WalledGarden to see the discussions about that. If you want you can start your own wiki web site, and there are several ways to do that. See RunningYourOwnWikiFaq for more information about that.

I hope that helps. You are encouraged most strongly to read widely here - there is much wisdom to be found amongst the general mish-mash. You will see the site at work, you will see how it gets used, and by contributing here and there both by adding content and by tidying up messes you will learn more about what a wiki is than from any explanation.

You might also like to read ConvertThreadModeToDocumentMode to help understand what makes a wiki so different.

--JohnNaughton Haven't been here in such along time. Have been learning in general alot of mis-mash of things on the internet in general, languages, setting up different forum software's, blogs, and an array of different things to round off in a jack-of-all trades type involvement so as to have a little knowledge about many things to get the feel for the more challenging things that involve programming browsers, and such.

At the moment, I am downloading Zope which afterwards I want to get up my own wiki using of course zwiki. The wiki's in general are the quickest by far in editing some information online. As forums and even blogs can take longer to publish your threads. There is much, much more to learn though for me, I have just scratched the surface as far as I'm concerned. So much change's everyday it's hard to keep up with the latest goings on all the time. As more and more folks use PCs, the more interesting the internet becomes. And of course I want to make my contribution as well. I have a forum located here> http://s3.invisionfree.com/K_MELEON_the_GECKO/index.php?act=idx. I use it to promote the K-Meleon web browser, it is the Unofficial forum but still helps to get the word out about how good the K-Meleon browser really is and how the user can control the build of it and preferences. I am presently at 82% on my Zope download so I better finish up here. Wonderful invention this is here, absolutely wonderful.

-- JohnNaughton

Slight return to see how things went, they look as though it is in good order. Will be back download is at 98% now. Good software.

-- JohnNaughton