YWAMKnowledgeBase:Mind the Gap

How YWAMKB fulfils the important Mind the Gap principle.

Mind The Gap
There is a very important and rising principle in our Mission called we need to "Mind The Gap" in YWAM in respect to different languages and access to technology. Not all YWAMers have 20Mb broadband internet connections. Or even a computer for that matter. If we really want to aid each other most fully we need to choose technology that has the broadest reach.

For that reason I chose the Mediawiki tool. Here are some of the reasons why.
 * 1) We wanted to build a community of YWAMers: Wikipedia has successfully built a community around their projects
 * 2) We wanted a wiki as it offered the easy and quick editing the project required. There are other tools but none with such simplicity, strong collaboration features, versioning and browser based accessibility.
 * 3) Mediawiki is one of the most well established and known wiki's available. It is also tuned for producing Encyclopedia's. The KnowledgeBase is closer to that than a Blog for example.
 * 4) Mediawiki is Free software and Open Source. This means we can give the software to each other and help each other out. It is easy to modify and improve. It also runs best on a Free software stack (LAMP) thus meaning that the only real costs have been hardware and domain purchase! (And the hardware was donated!). It can be implemented anywhere in the world - software expense will never be a barrier.
 * 5) It is a browser based technology supporting a wide range of browsers. This excludes no-one in my opinion.
 * 6) Mediawiki allows and defaults to Anonymous editing. This means the barrier to entry is very low - you go to the site and can contribute IMMEDIATELY. Anonymity is not good for our sort of community and makes the site vulnerable to vandalism. We ask users to register in order to edit so conversation can flow. Our registration process is very simple and quick and as low a barrier as I can make it.
 * 7) A Mediawiki site is multilingual out of the box - users can change the headings and general system messages into their language from their preference page.
 * 8) The Wikipedia project has demonstrated how to have parallel wiki's in different languages. Wikipedia have chosen a parallel approach rather than an all in one. This reflects the complexity of languages. It also recognises the importance for local ownership of articles. An English article on Evangelism may differ from a Korean article on Evangelism due to cultural differences. However, both may be improved by borrowing from each other.
 * 9) Parallel wiki's can scale easier than a combined wiki.