Well, I think it's cool anyway.

June 4, 2005 7:09 PM

PBwiki is a super simple, extremely clean route to having, what you always wanted (admit it), your very own wiki. Just enter your username and email address, and wait for the password to be sent to you, and you're off and running. No need for your own web space, no messing around with CGI, PHP or Python, and if you're worried that the site will vanish and take your stuff with it, you can even download your entire wiki in a ZIP file. It's not the first free wiki farm out there, but it's just about as simple and clean as one can get.

But what do you do with it once you have one? I've been using a personal wiki for keeping track of ideas, places and characters for a (rather sprawling) novel project; the simplified page markup of a wiki combined with easy hyperlinking make them great for brainstorming. You could also start up a game of Lexicon, which is well-suited for play on a wiki, and as previously seen in these parts. Or, you know, you could just start your own Everything. (Originally found on bOINGbOING.)
posted by JHarris (17 comments total)

That's really cool. When I read about Lexicon, I really wanted to start up a game of it with some friends. This would give me that chance. Thanks!
posted by piratebowling at 7:30 PM on June 4, 2005

i doubt anything is originally found on boinkboink.
posted by quonsar at 7:33 PM on June 4, 2005

Checkout BackPack too...

Email entire into your site, handy to do lists, reminders, etc.

http://backpackit.com/
posted by bobloblaw at 8:49 PM on June 4, 2005

I started using MoinX for a personal wiki. It's a nice little OS X application written in Python with a built-in webserver.
posted by mike3k at 9:16 PM on June 4, 2005

This seems nice & easy for a collaborative wiki. To keep notes and outline things for myself, I just started using TiddlyWiki, and I'm loving it. It's a single self-contained HTML file, so you can slap it on a USB stick or gmail it to yourself and use it anywhere. There's also a Getting Things Done version.
posted by muckster at 9:19 PM on June 4, 2005

Woo woo....

Wikis 'R us.
posted by troutfishing at 9:50 PM on June 4, 2005

Hi! I'm honored my project made mefi! It's very simple (but hopefully no simpler) but is rapidly evolving - I've put a pretty big set of features into it in the last 30 hours, even, and lots is planned for the coming few days. Please email me with what you love and hate about this service! :) (And if you love it, tell your friends!)
posted by dweekly at 10:35 PM on June 4, 2005

Can we just enter comments here? :-)

Thanks for providing this service. I set up a wiki to use for writing a draft of an essay. Any chance pbwiki could support block quotes? e.g. specified using a colon at the start of a line (like Wikipedia)? And is there some way we can make donations through PayPal?
posted by russilwvong at 11:54 PM on June 4, 2005

Alright, you can put comments here. But that makes me be less lazy in that I have to keep checking back! ;) You can block quote a section by adding a space to the beginning of lines. Check out the example in the SandBox and let me know if this was or wasn't what you were looking for.

As for donations, goodness me; I'd be flattered if you'd like to chip anything this way. Tell you what; if you chip in $10 or more to [e-mail] I'll make sure you get early/expanded access to the cool stuff we have coming down the pipe. And, of course, my undying gratitude. :)
posted by dweekly at 4:10 AM on June 5, 2005

I use the beautiful Xwiki:

http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Highly recommended.
posted by selfmedicating at 5:19 AM on June 5, 2005

Thanks guys! I was just this very minute searching for something like this.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:20 AM on June 5, 2005

Maybe someone can help me on this: I'd like a wiki with
**good access control**.
**hierarchical structure** [Books/Nonfiction/Travel] (simply creating pages with that literal title won't help as was suggested to me. I should be able to say, list all pages under 'Books'),
**nice themability**.
posted by Gyan at 6:37 PM on June 5, 2005

This would be a good app for writing an open source textbook that could be continuously updated and downloaded, complete, by students.
posted by craniac at 8:16 PM on June 5, 2005

"You can block quote a section by adding a space to the beginning of lines."

Afraid that didn't work for me -- it appears to make the text preformatted rather than indented. But I sent you a donation anyway. :-)
posted by russilwvong at 8:44 AM on June 6, 2005

Russil,

Oops; true! Let me see what I can do to make your wildest fantasies about block quotes come true. ;) I'll be making lots of quick iterations over the course of this week to fix bugs and add useful features. Input from users is our #1 guide, so please continue to tell me about stuff you want!
posted by dweekly at 9:28 AM on June 6, 2005

Thanks, David. No big hurry. If I think of any other nice-to-haves I'll e-mail them to you.
posted by russilwvong at 10:45 AM on June 7, 2005

Lots of features added today, including block quotes, numbered lists, nested lists, auto-email linking, looser link syntax, the ability to make wikis public, and making it so only admins can change passwords. :)
posted by dweekly at 11:44 PM on June 7, 2005