Does Confluence have protection against spam bots?

Yes. To protect against spam-bots, Captcha can be turned on for editing pages and for creating comments (or requesting an account, not relevant for us).

To avoid impact on legitimate users, Captcha has possible (global) exclusions: No-one / Signed-in / Members of a group. Signed-in is the default and is what we are using at this wiki. Signed in users are exempted from Captcha, and so only anonymous users have to go through Captcha. It is then still up to each space's admin to decide whether anonymous users are allowed to edit pages or to comment.

Can I get notified when someone edits a page - or edits any page in a space?

Yes. One can "watch" a page or a whole space, and receive email notifications when someone creates or edits a page:

To watch a space:

Browse -> Advanced -> Start watching this space

To watch a page:

Tools -> Watch

How can I paste in entire documents - pdf, word, ODF?

Confluence can import a word document into the wiki markup. Choose the Doc Import command from the Tools menu.

Can Confluence export or print a whole hierarchy of pages?

Space administrators or users with space export permissions can export a heirarchy of pages to PDF, HTML or XML:

Browse -> Advanced -> Export Space

Alternatively, you can include the Child pages in the parent page, so that their contents is display inside the contents of the parent page.

Use the children macro in your parent page at the place where the child pages should be rendered:
{children}
And, in general, you can use the include macro to render a page inside another:
{include:Child page name}

What kinds of permissions can I assign?

Please see our page on Permissions in Confluence

Why is Confluence doubling all line breaks?

This is a known bug in the Confluence Rich Text Editor. Each time a page is open in the Rich Text Editor in Internet Explorer, a line break is added at the end of each paragraph.

We are waiting for a fix - we will install it as soon as it's available and tested.  Please bear with us - and in the meantime, please consider using FireFox instead - the bug only affects Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Why can't I edit pictures?

Confluence currently does not have a built-in image editor.  Please use an external image editor.

Where's the spell checker?

Confluence currently does not have a built-in spell checker.  Please use the spell checker built into your browser.

Can I import pages from a different wiki?

While it can be difficult (and depends on what the other wiki is), there are ways to do this. Confluence can import a space from an XML backup (and can also export a space as XML), so moving a space between Confluence instances is reasonably easy.

And the Universal Wiki Converter could help you with converting from a different wiki system.

The curly braces don't work for my code samples - formatting code is still interpreted there.

The curly braces ({{code text}}) are just a font selection, picking the monospace font.

To disable formatting and render text verbatim, use the {noformat} tag, enclosing your code sample like this:

{noformat}Whatever *stars* or [brackets] you like{noformat}

How do I run a blog on Confluence

Very easily. In your space, create News items (by choosing Add -> News) and edit them same way you edit Pages. A blog post (how News Items are also called) differs from a page in having a publication date.

You can then create a blog on any page by using the Blog Posts Macro, which would render an overview (or a full listing) of the blog posts in your space.