WIKI

 Wiki Wiki Web

   What is Wiki??

This website and the software it runs on were created by WardCunningham for the PortlandPatternRepository. It is home to an InformalHistoryOfProgrammingIdeasas well as a large volume of material recording related discourses and collaboration between its readers.

The content is written by the users - people like you and me. Anyone can change any page or create new pages. Read the TextFormattingRules to find out how, and then go to the WikiWikiSandbox to try it yourself. Please use the WikiWikiSandbox if you want to experiment with how editing works. If you make a page you don't want to keep, just replace its text with the word "delete".

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.

Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users.

Ward Cunningham and co-author Bo Leuf, in their book The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web, described the essence of the Wiki concept as follows:

§  A wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki Web site, using only a plain-vanilla Web browser without any extra add-ons.

§  Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation almost intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page exists or not.

§  A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape.

A wiki enables communities to write documents collaboratively, using a simple markup language and a web browser. A single page in a wiki website is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire collection of pages, which are usually well interconnected by hyperlinks, is "the wiki". A wiki is essentially a database for creating, browsing, and searching through information. A wiki allows for non-linear, evolving, complex and networked text, argument and interaction.

A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review before modifications are accepted. Many wikis are open to alteration by the general public without requiring them to register user accounts. Many edits can be made in real-time and appear almost instantly online. This can facilitate abuse of the system. Private wiki servers require user authentication to edit pages, and sometimes even to read them.

Maged N. Kamel Boulos, Cito Maramba and Steve Wheeler write that it is the "openness of wikis that gives rise to the concept of 'Darwikinism', which is a concept that describes the 'socially Darwinian process' that wiki pages are subject to. Basically, because of the openness and rapidity that wiki pages can be edited, the pages undergo a natural selection process like that which nature subjects to living organisms. 'Unfit' sentences and sections are ruthlessly culled, edited and replaced if they are not considered 'fit', which hopefully results in the evolution of a higher quality and more relevant page. Whilst such openness may invite 'vandalism' and the posting of untrue information, this same openness also makes it possible to rapidly correct or restore a 'quality' wiki page."

 

Editing wiki pages

There are many different ways in which wikis have users edit the content. Ordinarily, the structure and formatting of wiki pages are specified with a simplified markup language, sometimes known as wikitext (for example, starting a line of text with an asterisk often sets up a bulleted list). The style and syntax of wikitexts can vary greatly among wiki implementations, some of which also allow HTML tags. Designers of wikis often take this approach because HTML, with its many cryptic tags, is not very legible, making it hard to edit. Wikis therefore favour plain-text editing, with fewer and simpler conventions than HTML, for indicating style and structure. Although limiting access to HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) of wikis limits user ability to alter the structure and formatting of wiki content, there are some benefits. Limited access to CSS promotes consistency in the look and feel, and having JavaScript disabled prevents a user from implementing code that may limit access for other users.

Here's How to Edit A Wiki: