Wiki

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A Wiki or wiki (pronounced "wicky", "weekee" or "veekee"; see pronunciation section below) is a website (or other hypertext documents collection) allowing users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. "Wiki" also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website (see Wiki software).

Wiki (with an upper case 'W') and WikiWikiWeb are both used to specifically refer to the Portland Pattern Repository, the first-ever wiki. This usage's proponents suggest a lower-case 'w' for wikis in general. Wiki wiki comes from the Hawaiian term for "quick" or "super-fast."; sometimes, wikiwiki or WikiWiki or Wikiwiki are used instead of wiki..

Pronunciation

In most English-speaking countries wiki is usually pronounced "wicky" or "weekee"; in Hebrew, German, Hawaiian and Hawaiian English, it is sometimes pronounced "veekee" or "vicky"

Controlling changes

Generally, Wikis practice the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes—rather than making it difficult to make them. Thus, while wikis are very open, they provide means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages. The most prominent, on almost every wiki, is the "Recent Changes" page—a specific list numbering recent edits, or a list of all the edits made within a given timeframe. Some wikis allow the list's filtering, so that minor edits—or edits made by automatic importing scripts ("bots")—can be excluded.

From the change log, two other functions are accessible in most wikis: the Revision History—showing previous page versions, and the diff feature—highlighting the changes between two revisions. The Revision History allows the editor to open and save a previous version of the page, thereby restoring the original content. The diff feature can be used to decide whether or not this is necessary. A regular wiki user can view the diff of an edit listed on the "Recent Changes" page and, if it is an unacceptable edit, consult the history, restoring a previous revision; this process is more or less streamlined, depending on the wiki software used.

History comparison reports highlight the changes between two revisions of a page.

In case unacceptable edits are missed on the "Recent Changes" page, some wiki engines provide additional content control. It can be monitored to ensure that a page, or a set of pages, keeps its quality. A person willing to maintain pages will be warned of modifications to the pages, allowing him or her to quickly verify the validity of new editions.

Vandalism

The open philosophy of most wikis—of letting anyone edit content—does not ensure that editors are well-intentioned. Most public wikis shun mandatory registration procedures, nevertheless, many major wiki engines (including MediaWiki, MoinMoin, UseModWiki and TWiki) provide ways to limit write access. Some wiki engines allow individual users to be banned as editors—accomplished by blocking their particular IP address or, if available, their usernames, however, many Internet service providers (ISPs) assign a new IP address for each login, so IP bans often can be circumvented relatively easily, and may prevent legitimate users from accessing features. To deal with this problem, temporary IP bans are sometimes used—and extended to all IP addresses within a particular range—ensuring, thereby, that the vandal cannot edit pages within a given time; the underlying assumption is that this often is sufficiently deterring. It may, however, still prevent some non-problematic users, from the same ISP, from using the service for the ban's duration.

A common defense against persistent vandals is simply to let them deface as many pages as they wish, knowing that they can easily be tracked and reverted after the vandal has left. This policy quickly becomes impractical, however, in the face of systematic defacements born out of either anger or frustration.

As an emergency measure, some wikis allow the database to be switched to read-only mode, while others enforce a policy in which only established users—registered prior to an arbitrary cutoff date—can continue editing. Generally, any vandal's vandalism can be reverted, quickly and easily. More problematic, though, are subtle, undetected errors inserted to pages—for example, changing album release dates and discographies.

Many wikis allow pages to be protected from editing; in most wikis, this is used only in extreme and rare cases. Protected pages on Wikipedia, for example, can be edited only by the administrators, who can also revoke the protection. Generally, such actions are considered as against the basic wiki philosophy, and, therefore, are usually avoided. At any given time, the English Wikipedia has perhaps thirty protected pages, out of hundreds of thousands.

Wiki engines

Given the wiki concept's relative simplicity, many implementations now exist—ranging from very simple "hacks"—implementing only core functionality, to sophisticated content management systems. For detailed discussions, along with a list of some available systems, see Wiki software; usually, they provide some lightweight markup language.

History

Wiki software originated in the design pattern community as a way of writing and discussing pattern languages. The Portland Pattern Repository was the first wiki, established by Ward Cunningham in 1995 [1]. He invented the wiki name and concept, and implemented the first wiki engine. Some people maintain that only the original wiki should be called Wiki (upper case) or the WikiWikiWeb; nevertheless, Ward Cunningham's Wiki is the most popular wiki site.

Cunningham coined the term wiki for the "wiki wiki" or "quick" shuttle buses at Honolulu Airport. Wiki wiki was the first Hawaiian term he learned on his first visit to the islands, when the airport counter agent directed him to take the wiki wiki bus between terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for "quick" and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web." [2] See also: List of computer term etymologies.

In the final years of the 20th century, wikis increasingly were recognized as a promising way to develop private- and public-knowledge bases, and this potential inspired the founders of the Nupedia encyclopedia project, Jimbo Wales and Larry Sanger, to use wiki technology as a basis for an electronic encyclopedia: Wikipedia was launched in January 2001, it originally was based upon UseMod software, but later switched to its own, open source codebase, now adopted by many other wikis.

Today, the English-language Wikipedia is, by far, the world's largest wiki; the German-language Wikipedia is the second-largest, while the other Wikipedias fill many of the remaining slots. The fourth-largest wiki is Susning.nu, a Swedish-language knowledge base running UseMod software. The all-encompassing nature of Wikipedia is a significant factor in its growth, while many other wikis are highly specialized. Some also have attributed Wikipedia's rapid growth to its decision not to use CamelCase. In any case, its being the largest wiki has led to its being referred to, sometimes, as the Mother wiki on smaller, subject-specific wikis.

Wiki communities

All known public wikis are listed at WorldWideWiki: SwitchWiki, which currently lists about 1000 public wiki communities (as of 2004-06-12).

The 30 largest wikis are listed at Meatball: Biggest wikis.

One way of finding a wiki on a subject in which you are interested is to follow the Wiki Node Network from wiki to wiki, or you could take a Wiki bus tour: TourBusStop.

See list of wiki.


References

See also


External links

Adapted from Wikipedia's article on Wiki licencend under [GNU FDL].

W8MD

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