Wiki

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.

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..

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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 Wikipedia - 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] .

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.

References

• Aigrain, Philippe (2003). The Individual and the Collective in Open Information Communities. Invited talk at the 16th Bled Electronic Commerce Conference, Bled, Slovenija, June 11th 2003. Available at: http://www.debatpublic.net/Members/paigrain/texts/icoic.html
• Aronsson, Lars (2002). Operation of a Large Scale, General Purpose Wiki Website: Experience from susning.nu's first nine months in service. Paper presented at the 6th International ICCC/IFIP Conference on Electronic Publishing, November 6–8, 2002, Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. Available at: http://aronsson.se/wikipaper.html
• Benkler, Yochai (2002). Coase's penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm. The Yale Law Jounal. v.112, n.3, pp.369–446.
• Cunningham, Ward and Leuf, Bo (2001): The Wiki Way. Quick Collaboration on the Web. Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-71499-X.
• Jansson, Kurt (2002): "Wikipedia. Die Freie Enzyklopädie." Lecture at the 19th Chaos Communications Congress (19C3), December 27, Berlin, Germany. Online description: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Kurt_Jansson/Vortrag_auf_dem_19C3
• Möller, Erik (2003). Loud and clear: How Internet media can work. Presentation at the Open Cultures conference, June 5–6, Vienna, Austria. Available at: http://opencultures.t0.or.at/oc/participants/moeller
• Möller, Erik (2003). Tanz der Gehirne. Telepolis, May 9–30. Four parts: (i) "Das Wiki-Prinzip", (ii) "Alle gegen Brockhaus", (iii) "Diderot's Traumtagebuch", und (iv) "Diesen Artikel bearbeiten".
• Nakisa, Ramin (2003). "Wiki Wiki Wah Wah". Linux User and Developer v.29, pp.42–48. Available at: http://194.73.118.134/lud29-Collaborative_Software-Wiki.pdf
• Remy, Melanie. (2002). Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Online Information Review. v.26, n.6, p.434.

External links

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