What is a Wiki and How Does the Technology Work?

A wiki is a type of collaborative software, also referred to as wiki software. It is essentially a website that allows the website host and its visitors to add, remove or edit its contents. Wikis are easy to use because they allow web pages to be created and edited in a common web browser (Firefox, Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.), with no knowledge of HTML. Instead of HTML, wiki software uses a simple markup language, known as "wikitext", or “wiki markup”, which is really just a simplified alternative to HTML used for wiki websites.

Essentially wiki markup allows you to work in plain-text and requires knowledge of only a few conventions related to structure and style. For example, an ordered list marked by hyphens will be recognized as bullets and will be converted accordingly on the web page. According to Wikipedia, one of the most commonly known wiki’s, there is no present standard for wiki markup, but a proposal is in place. However, it may be noted that the “next generation” wiki engines are evolving rapidly and some now allow "WYSIWYG" editing.

It may also be important to note that Wikipedia was not the first instance of wiki software. The first wiki software, originally called Quickweb, was created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, who after a trip to Honolulu Hawaii, learned the Hawaiian-language word “wiki”, meaning fast, and applied it to his Quickweb concept. The first “wiki” called a wiki was the WikiWikiWeb. It didn’t take long for the term and concept to catch on and by the early 2000s, a number of wikis were being used and in 2002 the first commercial “open source” wiki, Socialtext, was launched.

Wikis are appealing because they are so easy to use. A wiki is essentially a very easy to use database that is maintained by its users. It is made up of a series of pages, referred to as “wiki pages”, which are characterized by their interconnectivity via hyper links. Because wikis are a “hypertext medium”, they do not follow a linear navigational structure; rather each wiki page contains an abundance of hyperlinks leading to other pages, “wiki-nodes” (pages that describe related wikis), or “neighbour’s” (a related wiki that discuses similar content). Multiple wiki-nodes form a network that can take you from one wiki to another. Wikipedia has implemented a “wiki bus” that allows you to tour these networks; check out Wikipedia's Tour Bus Stop.

Wikis can range from quite simple (basic text formatting) to very complex (supports tables, images, formulas, etc). Wikis often include a number of tools, and depending on the level of complexity, they may include tools designed to monitor, report and restore changes. For example, many wikis have the ability to generate history comparison reports, (also know as the “diff feature”) which shows the changes between two revisions of the same page and the revision history option which shows previous versions of the given page. They may also include tools that allow contributors to discuss and resolve issues, or tools that enable additional content control such as modification notification for the editor to ensure pages maintain quality. Moreover, many wikis offer at least a basic title search and some allow for full-text searching, the scalability of the search capability depends on the wiki engine and the type of database (e.g. indexed) it uses.

As noted above, Wikipedia, is likely the most commonly known public wiki and according to Wikipedia, it is the worlds largest functioning wiki. It is a “free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit” and thus is an “open source”, where open source refers to allowing anyone to edit content. Like Wikipedia, most wikis are designed with the intention of making it easy to edit, correct mistakes, and create new content. Despite the fact that this is a big part of the ‘wiki appeal’, there are tradeoffs for such simple editing abilities. While some public wikis require contributors to register, many do not. This gives visitors complete unrestricted access to the site, which has positive aspects, but can also lead to abuse of the system. With unrestricted access users may accidentally or intentionally add incorrect or misleading information. However, because wikis are so easily corrected the hope is that information of this nature will be quickly removed or corrected by their large communities.

List of Resources not linked in Text

• Wiki Science

• What makes an enterprise wiki?

• QuickiWiki, Swiki, TWiki, ZWiki, and the Plone Wars: Wiki as PIM and Collaborative Content Tool

• Wikis at HowStuffWorks

• What's a Wiki?

• So You Want to Build a Wiki?

Some Neat Stuff to Check Out:

• Comparison of wiki farms

• Comparison of wiki software & List of wiki software

• Bliki

• List of wikis

• Wiki Engines