Meetings in Georgia, Caucasus

Now that you know how to edit your wikipage, make it sufficiently readable and visually appealing, and also to connect it with other records, you might want to know about creative uses of wikipages in WiserEarth. You can use it as:

1. About section of all record types and groups' bulletin boards.

This section is essentially a wikipage, where editing is done using the same toolbar and HTML code. So you can pretty much do everything in Step 3 of this tutorial in About sections of record pages. In a group, you can imagine using bulletin boards to feature several members or content.

2. Group brainstorming

Wikipage is designed to accommodate collaborative editing of a document by many people. A group brainstorming session on a wikipage can look something like this:

• Someone post an outline of topics to discuss and decide upon
• Others edit the outline and leave a comment with each editing either in the wikipage or in the comment section
• An agreement is reached on the topics to flesh out
• Group members add content for each topic while repeating the editing and commenting process along the way
• The group have a final document that everyone is satisfied of.

Combined with the watchlist and the Show History feature, each time a member edits, others are notified of it and can check which part was edited by who when. This encourages further editing.

3. Image, audio and video gallery

By uploading images and arranging them using tables, you can create a simple image gallery out of a wikipage. Image can originate from your computer or from Flickr and Photobucket. The same goes with video from YouTube, Google Video and Current TV.

While there's no audio upload feature, there is a file upload feature where you can upload podcasts, meeting recordings, video recordings, etc. This is done via the 'Files and Photos' tab. Once they're uploaded, you will need to add links to the files' URL in the main body of the wikipage.

4. Journal / blog / diary

A wikipage naturally can be a place to write articles and journal entries. By linking several wikipages, and then link them to your profile page, you can create a simple blog in WiserEarth. However, you must be prepared to get your wikipages edited by others (for the better or worse).

5. Polling and voting tool
As every edit is recorded in a wikipage's 'history' along with who edited when, we can use a wikipage as a polling space or to vote on an issue or candidate. Establishing the options, the mechanism to cast someone's choice or vote, and making sure people follow the mechanism correctly, we have a transparent and verifiable polling / voting system. Here's an example >>