For a huge, multilingual project like Wikipedia and our sister projects (nine in all, I believe) just finding the edit button can sometimes be a challenge. Add in to the mix the enormous proliferation of wikis, including those not run on MediaWiki, and you’ve got one gigantic pool of user interfaces.
Thus, the problem presents itself that there is no universal method for identifying if a site is a wiki or not. The universal wiki edit button 
is the answer that the larger wiki community (sometimes called the Wiki Ohana) has developed.
Just like the blogging world’s orange “waves” RSS symbol, wikis now have a single symbol to identify them. Click the button and you are magically transported to the page’s edit window. The UEB or UWEB (pick your acronym) is a great convenience for those already familiar with wiki, and an invitation to edit for those who aren’t. How’s that for cool?
All you need to do is download a Firefox extension (there’s not currently any Internet Explorer version), and it will auto-discover any wikis that have joined in this effort. The list of sites that have it up and running is already pretty impressive:
* All Wikimedia wikis, including everything under the purview of WikiProject Oregon. Major thanks to Brion Vibber for making that happen.
* Ward Cunningham’s Wiki, the very first wiki.
* wikiHow, the first to implement this. The original technical development for the UEB is credited to wikiHow’s Travis Derouin.
* Angela Beesley’s wiki
* AboutUs, based here in Portland Oregon
* the Creative Commons wiki
* SocialText
…and many more! Basically, a lot of the biggest wikis on the net have adopted (or are in the process of adopting) this feature. I personally have downloaded the extension, and I can tell you that it is a joy to see that little green button appear when I visit a wiki. It says to me, “this is a site that knows what wiki is all about”. Even if you’ve never edited before, or are tied to a single wiki, I strongly urge you to try it out.
WikiProject Oregon 
June 19, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Well said, Steven — definitely better than my version 😉 Good explanation of an exciting tool…one day we’ll be famous for “being there” when this plan was hashed out at RCC.
I’m off to download the extension!
June 19, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Direct link to install the extension in Firefox:
here
June 19, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Thanks for the link, Pete(r) – shouldn’t it be in the main article though? (Is it possible to add it once a posting has been posted?? People shouldn’t have to wonder – as I did – I was lucky, because I took a chance that it might be in the comments and looked at them!)
June 20, 2008 at 12:25 am
Where does the button show up? I just loaded it, but I’m also running the just-released Firefox 3.0….
June 20, 2008 at 10:45 am
@EncMstr
The buttons shows up in the URL bar, so the center bar where the domain name shows up. It only shows up on editable pages of wikis that have it. It disappears on other sites and pages that you can’t edit (such as Special pages and protected pages). You can check to make sure the extension is working if you go to your Preferences in Firefox, under the Main tab is a button to Manage Add-ons. You should be able to see if it’s enabled there. I’ve also downloaded FF3, and it’s been working for me.
June 20, 2008 at 11:07 am
@Mom(artha), it’s possible to edit a post, but those are Steven’s words, not mine — so I’m not gonna do it unless he wants it in there! (It’s not so hard to find from his post, just click his link to the UEB web site, and it’s pretty prominent on there.)
@EncMstr, look at the picture, silly!
Unfortunately, I can’t get the extension to install at all for some reason, on FF3 on a Mac. So I haven’t been able to try it yet! If I figure out what’s up, I’ll post back.
June 20, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I can’t wait to try this at home. BTW has anyone tried adding Wikipedia recent changes pages to their blog feed? It’s a great way to keep an eye on things, because face it, you can’t be on Wikipedia all the time. Let me know if you don’t know what I’m talking about and I’ll write a short post about it.
June 21, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Katr, I think that would be a great post topic..it’d offer some insights into both how RSS works and how Wikipedia works. I say git to it!
June 23, 2008 at 8:15 am
I don’t know how RSS works! Maybe we can collaborate on something.
June 23, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Collaborate? What’s that? 😉
If you start something and save it as a draft, I’ll keep my eye out for it…