Smelling like a wiki
Writing
In a wiki, writers become contributors, shifting the understanding of what writing can be from a traditional understanding of an individual (genius) author, towards someone contributing to a distributed practice of writing text.
This text is written in a wiki with 529 pages, made through 5,222 edits, written by 35 contributors, of which 0 are considered active, and in the middle of 263 uploaded files. We're writing in the WikiEditor, which is the simple text editor that is enabled by default when you install a new MediaWiki instance. I had to check the Special:Version page to find the name of this text editor.
Who else has been around on this wiki recently?
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- This edit created a new page (also see list of new pages)
- m
- This is a minor edit
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- This edit was performed by a bot
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14 November 2025
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17:34 | (Upload log) [Simoon; Manetta] | |||
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17:34 Simoon talk contribs uploaded File:Dandelion-octomode.svg | ||||
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14:42 Manetta talk contribs uploaded File:Wiki-to-print.gv.svg (still very wip) | ||||
| 14:53 | Pdf:Unfolding diffhist +37 Manetta talk contribs | ||||
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14:44 | Main Page 2 changes history +195 [Manetta (2×)] | |||
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14:44 (cur | prev) +9 Manetta talk contribs (→octomode) | ||||
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14:43 (cur | prev) +186 Manetta talk contribs (→Octomode) | ||||
Who else has an account?
- Aldmilne talk contribs
- Chavezheras talk contribs
- Christianvonand talk contribs
- CodaMarooned talk contribs
- Crichlow talk contribs
- Decentral1se talk contribs
- Femke talk contribs
- Freja Kir talk contribs
- Geoffcox talk contribs
- Ingaluchs talk contribs
- Integloerich talk contribs
- Jack talk contribs
- JackWilson talk contribs
- Jung-Ah talk contribs
- Klb talk contribs
- Magda talk contribs
- Manetta talk contribs
- Mara talk contribs
- Mateus talk contribs
- MediaWiki default talk contribs
- Menotti talk contribs
- NWess talk contribs
- Nnsshh talk contribs
- Ooooo talk contribs
- Pold talk contribs
- RRA talk contribs
- Sandy talk contribs
- Sfoerster talk contribs
- Shusha talk contribs
- Simoon talk contribs
- Siusoon talk contribs
- Teodora sinziana talk contribs
- Teodorasinziana talk contribs
- Timcowlishaw talk contribs
- Xenodata talk contribs
- Xenodata-A talk contribs
What were the latest pages that were made?
- 10:50, 14 November 2025 How to make the EtherpadLite MediaWiki extention not leak ip-addresses or usernames (hist | edit) [1,271 bytes] Manetta (talk | contribs) (Created page with "in <code>extensions/EtherpadLite/EtherpadLite_body.php edit the following lines: <syntaxhighlight lang="php"> # Etherpad Lite requires rawurlencoded userName, thus we must add it manually if ( method_exists( $parser, 'getUserIdentity' ) ) { // MW 1.36+ $user = $parser->getUserIdentity(); } else { $user = $parser->getUser(); } $url = wfAppendQuery( $url, array( "showControls" => $showControls, "showChat"...")
- 11:10, 9 November 2025 CC-collective conditions for use (hist | edit) [7,138 bytes] Simoon (talk | contribs) (Created page with "When you[*] cross paths with CC, you are welcome to use this server under the following collective conditions [to pronounce as a stuttering c-c-c-conditions...]. And please add your use of the server to the https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/pad/p/cc-conditions collective calendar, so we can keep an eye on the capacity of the server together. How can this server be available AND unstable, shared AND sustainable, free to be used AND situated, a production environment AND in...")
- 10:46, 9 November 2025 D*signweek 2025 (hist | edit) [4,127 bytes] Simoon (talk | contribs) (Created page with "==How do your practice and projects relate to the design week motto, “For who(m) is the making?”== The design week motto asks about the inter-dependent relationships between designers, audiences and design itself. This inter-dependency is also expressed in OSP’s circular motto “Tools shape practice shape tools...”. It’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to make the same connection between those who develop or host tools and those who use them. CC is (c...")
- 11:02, 7 November 2025 Install Etherpad-lite (hist | edit) [1,670 bytes] Manetta (talk | contribs) (Created page with "==Installation== ''7 Nov 2025'' These are the steps followed to install Etherpad-lite 2.5.3 on CC: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite?tab=readme-ov-file#installation required: Node.js >= 18.18.2. nodejs in apt trixie: <code>nodejs/stable 20.19.2+dfsg-1 amd64</code> apt install nodejs npm npm install -g pnpm "pnpm is up to 2x faster than npm" (hmm, oke) adduser --system --no-create-home etherpad-lite cd /opt/ git clone -b master https://github.com/ethe...")
- 10:48, 7 November 2025 How to create a system user (hist | edit) [155 bytes] Manetta (talk | contribs) (Created page with "make a system user: $ sudo adduser --system --no-create-home USERNAME switch to system user: $ sudo su -s /bin/bash USERNAME Category:Sysadmin")
Which are pages yet to be made?
What are the 5 last files that have been uploaded?
| Date | Name | Thumbnail | Size | User | Description | Versions |
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| 17:34, 14 November 2025 | Dandelion-octomode.svg (file) |  |
279 KB | Simoon | 1 | |
| 14:42, 14 November 2025 | Wiki-to-print.gv.svg (file) |  |
7 KB | Manetta | still very wip | 1 |
| 12:19, 5 November 2025 | Simon-bio-pic-2025.jpeg (file) |  |
2.55 MB | Simoon | 1 | |
| 11:58, 5 November 2025 | Whybootlegbooks.pdf (file) |  |
2.61 MB | Simoon | 1 | |
| 11:55, 5 November 2025 | 100 0170-13.JPG (file) |  |
389 KB | Simoon | 1 |
And who contributed to this page?
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Rendering layout
Wiki-to-print as a practice
Wiki-to-print is part of a broader interest in making publications using code and layout engines, instead of canvas and GUI based tools, as it allows us to work in collective modes and explore what this means, while being entangled with other communities of practice through the open standards (HTML and CSS) and tools (Mediawiki, Paged.js) we use. This means that books are being generated through scripts, newspapers rendered from multiple networked sources, or zines written HTML and CSS.
Using a wiki as an editing-design environment shifts multiple things around. What we currently refer to as wiki-to-print or wiki-layouting [i think we need a cute catchy name!] is actually a genealogy of practices of generating publications through a wiki. The trail includes work done at Constant in Brussels, Open Source Publishing in Brussels, the making of the book Volumetric Regimes in between Barcelona-Brussels-London-Rotterdam by Possible Bodies and Manetta Berends, the setup at The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI) by Femke Snelting and Martino Morandi in Brussels, the book Making Matters made by Hackers & Designers in Amsterdam, the making of the research newspapers Toward a Minor Tech and Content/Form with Geoff Cox, Christian Ulrikson, Winnie Soon and Varia/CC represented by Simon Browne and Manetta Berends in London-Rotterdam-Berlin. In all these occasions, wiki is used as a shared place for materials, editorial work and the making of the layout. Writing and design work can happen in a non-linear way and evolve parallel to each other, which invites to rethink editorial production workflows. Publications can be re-rendered over time, embracing the changes and transformations that might have emerged in between now and the previous edition. The versioning tracker and features like transclusion challenge traditional notions of authorship and modes of writing. Often a wiki becomes a rich messy archive and plays an important role as community infrastructure.