What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a simple but powerful way for any group of people to collaboratively build a website. It is an ideal way to meet the needs so-far-identified by the Pesticide Working Group (PWG) "tools sub-group."

If that's enough explanation to satisfy your curiousity, you are already ready to find out how to add to the Wiki. If you want a little more technical and marketing information first, read on.

This wiki is free! Of course, there is no free lunch. The host company, PBWiki, makes money by showing discreet ads on the wiki, and by encouraging users to upgrade their wiki to the "Silver" version (or higher). The Silver version of PBWiki is $10 per month and offers benefits we would probably want if our wiki becomes very popular within Coming Clean's PWG.

The next level of power in tools for collaboratively building a website would be a "content management system" (CMS). The leading CMS is Drupal, and Drupal software is free! But that's just the software. We would still need a web server that can host the Drupal software on the web. Access to a web server typically costs about $10 per month.

The following organizations within Coming Clean have contributed expertise in establishing the requirements for this wiki, choosing the software that satisfies those requirements, and in establishing the initial organization of the website (alphabetically):

• Beyond Pesticides, contact John Kepner
• Pesticide Action Network North America, contact Brian Hill
• Texans for Alternatives to Pesticides, contact Charlotte Wells

Now you definitely have more than enough to move on to finding out how to add to the Wiki. At some later date, after having gotten some practical experience, you might want some more advanced wiki theory and history.