Some of you may be aware of the existence of wikis already and will jump straight in here, but for those who don’t here’s a quick heads-up…

A wiki is a type of computer software that allows users to easily create, edit share and link web pages. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, power community websites, and are increasingly being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets or for use in Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb?, originally described it as 'the simplest online database that could possibly work'. One of the best-known wikis is Wikipedia (you might have heard of it).

So what’s the idea behind Mid-Wiki? Well, originally designed for the MIDIRS_Student_Zone and now extended to the entire internet. Mid-Wiki is your website where you can share information and knowledge. You can add delete edit all you like.

We know you midwives and maternity professionals are very resourceful and generous with all your knowledge and hope that Mid-Wiki will help you all in sharing it to everyone.

Getting Started
If you want to know more about getting going here, read the QuickStart page, then get yourself over to the SandBox before attempting to add or edit real content.

You can set yourself a UserName on this site if you want, using the cookie feature (available when editing pages, at the bottom). Alternatively, if your implementation of Mid Wiki supports it, authenticated users will have edits logged under their name (coming soon).

Editing...
...is easy: use the 'EditPage' button at the bottom of the page. Mid-Wiki employs versioning, so I can always roll back should the need arise — note also that some pages can't be edited (like this one). If that's the case, the edit button won't be available, and a message will appear telling you that the document is locked. Only the site admin. can edit those pages.

Adding a page
A new page is created when you edit an existing page and place a WikiWord? in it that doesn't already have a corresponding page, LikeThis?. Note that the new word then becomes a link to create a new page (i.e. with '?' as a hyperlink at the end). Click this new page link, and off you go. Of course, if you know what you're doing, you can also hack the URL to create new pages!

Or, you could just use the 'new page' link in the navigation pane. :o)

Monitoring
One last thing regarding monitoring, of course with all this freedom to create all the content you could wish for, comes responsibility! Should you find that anyone posts in appropriate content or abuses the editing facility please report them to webmaster@midirs.org they will then be bared from using the website.

Many Thanks

MIDIRS On-line Team