Dive Into OS X is a repository for Mac OS X system administrators. It has been reborn at its own domain, diveintoosx.org, and is now divided into the Dive Into OS X wiki, which is freely browsable and editable by anyone, and the Dive Into OS X FAQ, which is freely downloadable in 4 formats (HTML, PDF, Word, and plain text). Both the wiki and the FAQ are licensed under the GNU Free Documention License.
For those not familiar with the concept, a wiki is a collaborative environment where anyone can create new pages or edit existing pages through a browser. Content is entered as structured text, and converted to HTML on the fly. (Learn more about wiki syntax.) The wiki software (I use a modified version of MoinMoin) also has built-in searching, revision tracking, user preferences, and even a recent changes page (also available as RSS).
The biggest conceptual hurdle of wikis is that there is absolutely no access control. Anyone could, in theory, sabotage the wiki by editing a page and deleting useful content, or worse, intentionally inserting useless content. The only solution for this is community self-policing; thanks to the built-in revision history, deleted material can always be recalled, so inappropriate changes can be undone (by anyone). Of course, none of my readers would be so obnoxious, and in fact, several high-profile wikis that have run for years (like the Portland Pattern Repository) have had surprisingly few problems with vandals. Vandalism, like copyright infringement, is a social problem. Please don’t vandalize the wiki.
