Dynamic collaborative documentation at the Brookhaven National Laboratory Collider-Accelerator Department

Centralization of information pertaining to accelerators can benefit accelerator operation and development. Further, retention and the changeable nature of information present challenges to accelerator operation, particularly in instances of turnover. MediaWiki is free, server-based software licensed under the GNU general public license that uses PHP to render data stored in a MySQL database as interactive web documents, and is designed to produce a collaborative document known as a wiki. The MediaWiki engine was implemented at BNL, and this paper describes the first year of use by the operations, controls, and RF groups at the collider- accelerator department, including code modifications, common practices, and use as a training tool.