This wiki is in the process of being archived due to lack of usage and the resources necessary to serve it — predominately to bots, crawlers, and LLM companies. Edits are discouraged.
Pages are preserved as they were at the time of archival. For current information, please visit python.org.
If a change to this archive is absolutely needed, requests can be made via the infrastructure@python.org mailing list.

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What is a wiki?

A wiki (also called WikiWiki or WikiWikiWeb) is a collection of websites, which not only can be read, but can also be edited by the users directly and simply. wikiwiki is Hawaiian and means "fast".

The first WikiWikiWeb was developed and put into operation by Ward Cunningham in 1995. The idea of editable content in the World Wide Web dates from the original ideas of the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

The wiki-way

  • open and cooperative: on many sites, everyone may change everything.
  • simple and fast: you can enter and save any content, which is available at once. Content is more important than design.

  • safe: MoinMoin remembers all old page versions.

  • cross-linked: the information in the wiki is highly linked.
  • accessible: you only need a browser and a network connection to access the wiki.

  • flexible: in a wiki you can save many kinds of information, e. g. training courses, transparency lectures and brainstorming.

What is MoinMoin?

MoinMoin is software to run a wiki.

It is available under the GPL and implemented in the programming language Python. Contributions can be made by also using the GPL and Python.

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Finding information

MoinMoin has many ways to find information in the wiki:

Searching

  • Search field in the navigation area on the top of the page

    • For a title search, type in the search keywords and hit "Enter" (or click on Titles).

    • For a full-text search, type in the search keywords and click on Text.

  • Menu item FindPage

    • Includes indexes of all pages sorted by page names and words in the page name.
    • Advanced search functions.

(!) The title search can also be used to quickly navigate to pages that you only roughly know the title of.

You can find further information on the help page HelpOnSearching.

Navigation in the wiki

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Staying up to date

In a wiki, lots of things can change in a short time, since anyone can edit, add, or remove pages at any time.

For this reason you can easily follow these changes on the page RecentChanges.

Listed for every change is:

  • a link to a page showing differences.
  • a link to the changed page (as well as the information for this page).
  • when the change was made.
  • who made the change.
  • a comment made for the change.

(!) If you are logged in to the wiki, you can set a temporal bookmark using this page. In that case, the wiki will remember which changes you have already seen and will only display the new ones after that.

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Creating a wiki account

Using a wiki is often possible without creating an account (this depends on the security preferences).

However, using the wiki with an account is easier and better, because you can:

  • set a temporal bookmark on RecentChanges.

  • customize and personalize the navigation.
  • set your time zone.
  • subscribe to pages and get informed when a change is made.
  • do much more.

To create an account, use the link you can create one now on login page. Then you will have to enter:

  • a name (it is a good idea to use FirstnameLastname).

  • a password (not too simple!).
  • the password again (to avoid typing errors).
  • an e-mail address (for notifications or if you forgot your password)

/!\ Then click on Create Profile. /!\

The account will be created and you can log in to the wiki using your user name and password.

(!) You are logged in if you see the user name in the navigation area.

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User preferences

After account creation and login, you can change your user preferences and settings (click on the link Settings at the top of the page).

The default values should be fine for most of the preferences, but you might want to change:

  • the time zone (to convert the UTC time to your current time).
  • the size of the editor input box (depends on your screen resolution and font preferences).
  • maybe the preferred language (not necessary with a correctly configured browser).

Then click on the Save button at the bottom of the page.

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Your own wiki homepage

After creating an account you can see your own name in the navigation area, which is linked to a page of the same title: your personal homepage!

If you click on this link, you can see one of the unique characteristics of wikis for the first time: instead of getting a 404 not found error when a non-existent page is called, the wiki helps you create the page.

After following the instructions displayed, the wiki will display a template of your own homepage in a form.

You can change this template, give an optional comment, and then save the page by clicking Save Changes.

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The text editor

We just met it while creating your own homepage: the text-based editor of MoinMoin. You are, of course, not limited to only using it for that, because you can also use it to change any other page in the wiki.

You can do that simply by clicking on edit or edit (text) in the navigation area and MoinMoin will bring you to the text editor for the current page.

(!) You can't mess anything up, because the previous version of the page is always saved and can be restored if needed.

It is important to frequently use the preview function while editing a page, since using it will tell MoinMoin to create a backup of the editor's current content.

When you're done, you should enter an appropriate comment (which will then appear on RecentChanges and in the history of the page) and click save.

Should there be two people editing a page at the same time, the first person can save without problems. The second person will get a warning and should merge the first person's changes with his own. If you want to edit a page on your own, you should state that on the top of the page, so other people will read it.