Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Started/@comment-257763-20130904052523/@comment-188432-20130904154844

Well, let's be a little clearer. The underlying MediaWiki software has always contained the ability to be completely private. Wikia simply choses not to make this option available to their users. But can you privately install MediaWiki software on your computer and have a private wiki environment? Of course. It's been standard on Mac OS X Server for a long time. I'm running a private wiki locally right now.

There are also some wikifarms out there that will allow you to set up private wikis, but I don't have a list to hand. And nothing is as secure as a wiki installation on your own machine that simply has no access points to the internet. If I were writing a book and cared about copyright, that's what I'd do, because the installation would give you clear dates for your work that you could use in a court of law to defend your copyright. And you could demonstrate that by setting up the wiki in a precise and secure way that you took reasonable steps to secure your work.

If you don't have the server version of Mac OS X, I'd think, but do not know, that server versions of Windows would probably come with an ability to run a local wiki (with an option to make it public). Or, if you're running a normal, consumer license of most any OS, you can just get the MediaWiki code for free from mediawiki.org, and ask around there how to do all the settings.