Wiki
A wiki (/ˈwɪki/ ⓘ WICK-ee) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.

Wikis are powered by
There are hundreds of thousands of
The
Characteristics

In their 2001 book The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web, Cunningham and co-author Bo Leuf described the essence of the wiki concept:[10][11]
- "A wiki invites all users—not just experts—to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki website, using only a standard 'plain-vanilla' Web browser without any extra add-ons."
- "Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page exists or not."
- "A wiki is not a carefully crafted site created by experts and professional writers and designed for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the typical visitor/user in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the website landscape."
Editing
Source editing
Some wikis will present users with an edit button or link directly on the page being viewed. This will open an interface for writing, formatting, and structuring page content. The interface may be a source editor, which is text-based and employs a lightweight markup language (also known as wikitext, wiki markup, or wikicode), or a visual editor. For example, in a source editor, starting lines of text with asterisks could create a bulleted list.
The
Example of syntax
A short section of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland rendered in wiki markup:
Visual editing
While wiki engines have traditionally offered source editing to users, in recent years some implementations have added a rich text editing mode. This is usually implemented, using JavaScript, as an interface which translates formatting instructions chosen from a toolbar into the corresponding wiki markup or HTML. This is generated and submitted to the server transparently, shielding users from the technical detail of markup editing and making it easier for them to change the content of pages. An example of such an interface is the VisualEditor in MediaWiki, the wiki engine used by Wikipedia. WYSIWYG editors may not provide all the features available in wiki markup, and some users prefer not to use them, so a source editor will often be available simultaneously.
Version history
Some wiki implementations keep a record of changes made to wiki pages, and may store every version of the page permanently. This allows authors to revert a page to an older version to rectify a mistake, or counteract a malicious or inappropriate edit to its content.[13]
These stores are typically presented for each page in a list, called a "log" or "edit history", available from the page via a link in the interface. The list displays metadata for each revision to the page, such as the time and date of when it was stored, and the name of the person who created it, alongside a link to view that specific revision. A diff (short for "difference") feature may be available, which highlights the changes between any two revisions.
Edit summaries
The edit history view in many wiki implementations will include edit summaries written by users when submitting changes to a page. Similar to the function of a
Navigation
Traditionally, wikis offer free navigation between their pages via hypertext links in page text, rather than requiring users to follow a formal or structured navigation scheme. Users may also create indexes or table of contents pages, hierarchical categorization via a taxonomy, or other forms of ad hoc content organization. Wiki implementations can provide one or more ways to categorize or tag pages to support the maintenance of such index pages, such as a backlink feature which displays all pages that link to a given page. Adding categories or tags to a page makes it easier for other users to find it.
Most wikis allow the titles of pages to be searched amongst, and some offer
Navigation between wikis
Some wiki communities have established navigational networks between each other using a system called WikiNodes. A WikiNode is a page on a wiki which describes and links to other, related wikis. Some wikis operate a structure of neighbors and delegates, wherein a neighbor wiki is one which discusses similar content or is otherwise of interest, and a delegate wiki is one which has agreed to have certain content delegated to it.[14] WikiNode networks act as webrings which may be navigated from one node to another to find a wiki which addresses a specific subject.
Linking to and naming pages
The syntax used to create internal hyperlinks varies between wiki implementations. Beginning with the WikiWikiWeb in 1995, most wikis used
While this system made it easy to link to pages, it had the downside of requiring pages to be named in a form deviating from standard spelling, and titles of a single word required abnormally capitalizing one of the letters (e.g. "WiKi" instead of "Wiki"). Some wiki implementations attempt to improve the display of camel case page titles and links by reinserting spaces and possibly also reverting to lower case, but this simplistic method is not able to correctly present titles of mixed capitalization. For example, "Kingdom of France" as a page title would be written as "KingdomOfFrance", and displayed as "Kingdom Of France".
To avoid this problem, the syntax of wiki markup gained free links, wherein a term in natural language could be wrapped in special characters to turn it into a link without modifying it. The concept was given the name in its first implementation, in UseModWiki in February 2001.[16] In that implementation, link terms were wrapped in a double set of square brackets, for example [[Kingdom of France]]. This syntax was adopted by a number of later wiki engines.
It is typically possible for users of a wiki to create links to pages that do not yet exist, as a way to invite the creation of those pages. Such links are usually differentiated visually in some fashion, such as being colored red instead of the default blue, which was the case in the original WikiWikiWeb, or by appearing as a question mark next to the linked words.
History
Cunningham's system was inspired by his having used Apple's hypertext software HyperCard, which allowed users to create interlinked "stacks" of virtual cards.[20] HyperCard, however, was single-user, and Cunningham was inspired to build upon the ideas of Vannevar Bush, the inventor of hypertext, by allowing users to "comment on and change one another's text."[2][21] Cunningham says his goals were to link together people's experiences to create a new literature to document programming patterns, and to harness people's natural desire to talk and tell stories with a technology that would feel comfortable to those not used to "authoring".[20]
Wikipedia became the most famous wiki site[
Alternative definitions
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the word "wiki" was used to refer to both user-editable websites and the software that powers them, and the latter definition is still occasionally in use.[1]
By 2014, Ward Cunningham's thinking on the nature of wikis had evolved, leading him to write[23] that the word "wiki" should not be used to refer to a single website, but rather to a mass of user-editable pages or sites so that a single website is not "a wiki" but "an instance of wiki". In this concept of wiki federation, in which the same content can be hosted and edited in more than one location in a manner similar to distributed version control, the idea of a single discrete "wiki" no longer made sense.[24]
Implementations
The software which powers a wiki may be implemented as a series of
database access is faster on large wikis, particularly for searching.Hosting
Wikis can also be created on
Trust and security
Access control
The four basic types of users who participate in wikis are readers, authors, wiki administrators and system administrators. System administrators are responsible for the installation and maintenance of the wiki engine and the container web server. Wiki administrators maintain content and, through having elevated privileges, are granted additional functions (including, for example, preventing edits to pages, deleting pages, changing users' access rights, or blocking them from editing).[26]
Controlling changes

Wikis are generally designed with a soft security philosophy in which it is easy to correct mistakes or harmful changes, rather than attempting to prevent them from happening in the first place. This allows them to be very open while providing a means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages. Most wikis offer a recent changes page which shows recent edits, or a list of edits made within a given time frame.[27] Some wikis can filter the list to remove edits flagged by users as "minor" and automated edits.[28] The version history feature allows harmful changes to be reverted quickly and easily.[13]
Some wiki engines provide additional content control, allowing remote monitoring and management of a page or set of pages to maintain quality. A person willing to maintain pages will be alerted of modifications to them, allowing them to verify the validity of new editions quickly.[29] Such a feature is often called a watchlist.
Some wikis also implement patrolled revisions, in which editors with the requisite credentials can mark edits as being legitimate. A flagged revisions system can prevent edits from going live until they have been reviewed.[30]
Wikis may allow any person on the web to edit their content without having to register an account on the site first (anonymous editing), or require registration as a condition of participation.[31] On implementations where an administrator is able to restrict editing of a page or group of pages to a specific group of users, they may have the option to prevent anonymous editing while allowing it for registered users.[32]
Trustworthiness and reliability of content
Critics of publicly editable wikis argue that they could be easily tampered with by malicious individuals, or even by well-meaning but unskilled users who introduce errors into the content. Proponents maintain that these issues will be caught and rectified by a wiki's community of users.[2][17] High editorial standards in medicine and health sciences articles, in which users typically use peer-reviewed journals or university textbooks as sources, have led to the idea of expert-moderated wikis.[33] Wiki implementations retaining and allowing access to specific versions of articles has been useful to the scientific community, by allowing expert peer reviewers to provide links to trusted version of articles which they have analyzed.[34]
Security
In addition to using the approach of soft security for protecting themselves, larger wikis may employ sophisticated methods, such as bots that automatically identify and revert vandalism. For example, on Wikipedia, the bot ClueBot NG uses machine learning to identify likely harmful changes, and reverts these changes within minutes or even seconds.[35]
Disagreements between users over the content or appearance of pages may cause edit wars, where competing users repetitively change a page back to a version that they favor. Some wiki software allows administrators to prevent pages from being editable until a decision has been made on what version of the page would be most appropriate.[3]
Some wikis may be subject to external structures of governance which address the behavior of persons with access to the system, for example in academic contexts.[25]
Harmful external links
As most wikis allow the creation of hyperlinks to other sites and services, the addition of malicious hyperlinks, such as sites infected with
Communities
Applications

The English Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis on the World Wide Web[36] and ranks in the top 10 among all Web sites in terms of traffic.[37] Other large wikis include the WikiWikiWeb, Memory Alpha, Wikivoyage, and previously Susning.nu, a Swedish-language knowledge base. Medical and health-related wiki examples include Ganfyd, an online collaborative medical reference that is edited by medical professionals and invited non-medical experts.[38] Many wiki communities are private, particularly within enterprises. They are often used as internal documentation for in-house systems and applications. Some companies use wikis to allow customers to help produce software documentation.[39] A study of corporate wiki users found that they could be divided into "synthesizers" and "adders" of content. Synthesizers' frequency of contribution was affected more by their impact on other wiki users, while adders' contribution frequency was affected more by being able to accomplish their immediate work.[40] From a study of thousands of wiki deployments, Jonathan Grudin concluded careful stakeholder analysis and education are crucial to successful wiki deployment.[41]
In 2005, the Gartner Group, noting the increasing popularity of wikis, estimated that they would become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50% of companies by 2009.[42][needs update] Wikis can be used for project management.[43][44][unreliable source] Wikis have also been used in the academic community for sharing and dissemination of information across institutional and international boundaries.[45] In those settings, they have been found useful for collaboration on grant writing, strategic planning, departmental documentation, and committee work.[46] In the mid-2000s, the increasing trend among industries toward collaboration placed a heavier impetus upon educators to make students proficient in collaborative work, inspiring even greater interest in wikis being used in the classroom.[3]
Wikis have found some use within the legal profession and within the government. Examples include the
In academic contexts, wikis have also been used as project collaboration and research support systems.[48][49]
City wikis
A city wiki or local wiki is a wiki used as a knowledge base and social network for a specific geographical locale.[50][51][52] The term city wiki is sometimes also used for wikis that cover not just a city, but a small town or an entire region. Such a wiki contains information about specific instances of things, ideas, people and places. Such highly localized information might be appropriate for a wiki targeted at local viewers, and could include:
- Details of public establishments such as public houses, bars, accommodation or social centers
- Owner name, opening hours and statistics for a specific shop
- Statistical information about a specific road in a city
- Flavors of ice cream served at a local ice cream parlor
- A biography of a local mayor and other persons
Growth factors
A study of several hundred wikis in 2008 showed that a relatively high number of administrators for a given content size is likely to reduce growth;[53] access controls restricting editing to registered users tends to reduce growth; a lack of such access controls tends to fuel new user registration; and that a higher ratio of administrators to regular users has no significant effect on content or population growth.[54]
Legal environment
Joint authorship of articles, in which different users participate in correcting, editing, and compiling the finished product, can also cause editors to become
Wikis and their users can be held liable for certain activities that occur on the wiki. If a wiki owner displays indifference and forgoes controls (such as banning copyright infringers) that they could have exercised to stop copyright infringement, they may be deemed to have authorized infringement, especially if the wiki is primarily used to infringe copyrights or obtains a direct financial benefit, such as advertising revenue, from infringing activities.
Conferences
Active conferences and meetings about wiki-related topics include:
- Atlassian Summit, an annual conference for users of Atlassian software, including Confluence.[58]
- OpenSym (called WikiSym until 2014), an academic conference dedicated to research about wikis and open collaboration.
- SMWCon, a bi-annual conference for users and developers of Semantic MediaWiki.[59]
- TikiFest, a frequently held meeting for users and developers of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware.[60]
- Wikimania, an annual conference dedicated to the research and practice of Wikimedia Foundation projects like Wikipedia.
Former wiki-related events include:
- RecentChangesCamp (2006–2012), an unconference on wiki-related topics.
- RegioWikiCamp (2009–2013), a semi-annual unconference on "regiowikis", or wikis on cities and other geographic areas.[61]
See also
Notes
- ^ The realization of the Hawaiian /w/ phoneme varies between [w] and [v], and the realization of the /k/ phoneme varies between [k] and [t], among other realizations. Thus, the pronunciation of the Hawaiian word wiki varies between ['wiki], ['witi], ['viki], and ['viti]. See Hawaiian phonology for more details.
References
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- ^ a b c d e f g Black, Peter; Delaney, Hayden; Fitzgerald, Brian (2007), Legal Issues for Wikis: The Challenge of User-generated and Peer-produced Knowledge, Content and Culture (PDF), vol. 14, eLaw J., archived from the original (PDF) on December 22, 2012
- ^ Cunningham, Ward (June 27, 2002). "What is a Wiki". WikiWikiWeb. Archived from the original on April 16, 2008. Retrieved April 10, 2008.
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- ^ Cunningham, Ward (November 1, 2003). "Correspondence on the Etymology of Wiki". WikiWikiWeb. Archived from the original on March 17, 2007. Retrieved March 9, 2007.
- ^ Cunningham, Ward (February 25, 2008). "Wiki History". WikiWikiWeb. Archived from the original on June 21, 2002. Retrieved March 9, 2007.
- ^ a b Bill Venners (October 20, 2003). "Exploring with Wiki: A Conversation with Ward Cunningham, Part I". artima developer. Archived from the original on February 5, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
- ^ Cunningham, Ward (July 26, 2007). "Wiki Wiki Hyper Card". WikiWikiWeb. Archived from the original on April 6, 2007. Retrieved March 9, 2007.
- ^ Diamond, Graeme (March 1, 2007). "March 2007 update". Oxford English Dictionary. Archived from the original on January 7, 2011. Retrieved March 16, 2007.
- ^ Ward Cunningham [@WardCunningham] (November 8, 2014). "The plural of wiki is wiki. See https://forage.ward.fed.wiki.org/an-install-of-wiki.html" (Tweet). Retrieved March 18, 2019 – via Twitter.
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Figure 4 shows that having a relatively high number of administrators for a given content size is likely to reduce growth.
- ^ Roth, C.; Taraborelli, D.; Gilbert, N. (2008). "Measuring wiki viability. An empirical assessment of the social dynamics of a large sample of wikis" (PDF). Surrey Research Insight Open Access. The Centre for Research in Social Simulation. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 16, 2012. Retrieved November 9, 2018.
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Sources
- Ebersbach, Anja (2008), Wiki: Web Collaboration, ISBN 978-3-540-35150-4
Further reading
- Mader, Stewart (2007), Wikipatterns, ISBN 978-0-470-22362-8
- Tapscott, Don (2008), ISBN 978-1-59184-193-7
External links
- Exploring with Wiki, an interview with Ward Cunningham
- Murphy, Paula (April 2006). Topsy-turvy World of Wiki. University of California.
- Ward Cunningham's correspondence with etymologists
- WikiIndex and WikiApiary, directories of wikis
- WikiMatrix, a website for comparing wiki software and hosts
- wikiteam on GitHub