# Strengths: * Open-source * Federated * JavaScript * Searchable * Computable * Supports sharing knowledge through patterns and pattern languages * Moving to vernacular programability # Weaknesses: * Use requires some learning as a result of exceptional features * Awkward on smart phones and tablets
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The FedWiki has been under active development since 2007. It is an open source, multimodal, highly democratic social media platform that can support whole neighborhoods as well as arbitrary communities. You are using the FedWiki now. The FedWiki platform can do many things and it can integrate them in uniquely useful ways. Here is a partial list of the things that we are developing for neighborhood democratic decision making.
digraph { layout=dot rankdir=LR overlap=false concentrate=true bgcolor=lightblue node [style=filled shape=box color=blue4 fontcolor=white] subgraph cluster_3 {FedWiki -> {Narrative Maps "Graphs\n(Neo4j)" Surveys Calculation "Shared\nDocuments" Patterns "Pattern\nLanguage"} } }
You are using a FedWiki now. It is a powerful tool for sharing ideas and information. It also supports context aware calculations and visualizations. FedWiki pages are easy to read. They use internal and external hyperlinks just like we are used to in normal web pages and websites.
**Creating Content**, which goes far beyond just **Writing Text**, requires some practice--because there are so many new possibilities.
To write in a FedWiki you must have access to a **Personal FedWiki Site** that only you can write to. When writing, **Paragraphs** can be moved around within **Panes** and between panes. With your own site you can copy FedWiki pages (panes) from any other FedWiki site, whether it is another site that you "own" or not.
Every bit of FedWiki content is public and licenced under the **Creative Commons** agreement: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license applies uniformly to all contributions by all authors. Where authors quote other sources they do so within the terms of fair use or other compatible terms.
There are several ways to **Search**--within a site, within a neighborhood, and across much of the federation of sites. You will need an explanation of the concepts of **Neighborhood** and **Federation**.
Then there is the whole world of **Plug-ins**. Each is an application written to work on a FedWiki page but also as an object within an aware of the Federation. The more common plug-ins are selected from the "**Factory**". The factory is the sub-window that us use to add paragraphs and plug-ins.
Then there are the amazing tools that: 1) let you know how each page was created. 2) Another tool that lets you see who else has some version of this pane (page). 3) Another to display every site in the current "neighborhood". 4) And perhaps most critically, an area that has collected the information about: who's site it is; whether it is available to be written in; a search tool; and finally the "hamburger" icon that exposes some commonly used tools.
We are working on more user friendly media to help you learn to write and to set up your own FedWiki servers. More to come.