AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

MediaWiki Embraces Social Networking - PBS Learning Now

MediaWiki, the wiki tool used by Wikipedia and thousands of other wiki sites around the world, just got a lot more powerful. The for-profit companion project to Wikipedia announced this week that they were releasing free tools that will allow MediaWiki sites to include a range of social networking features. Schools looking for a private social networking tool they can host in-house should definitely take notice.

There are lots of wiki platforms out there, but MediaWiki is probably the most recognizable. Even if you don’t know that name, you’ve undoubtedly seen it in action, as it’s the wiki software used to power Wikipedia. MediaWiki has become popular among users interested in hosting their own wiki server. Unlike commercially hosted wiki sites like pbwiki and Wikispaces, MediaWiki is free and open software you can run yourself. So if you’re a school technology coordinator who wants students and teachers to collaborate via a wiki without having to send them to an outside service, it’s often been a good choice.

As social networking sites have become more popular, though, tools like MediaWiki have shown their limitations. While they’re ideal for collaborative document production - that’s what they were designed to do, after all - they’ve often lacked other tools common in the social networking world, like robust user profiles, the ability to “friend” other users, discussion boards, ratings tools and the like.

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