"Wiki" Sites

What is a Wiki?

A "wiki" is a website where anybody can post material or make changes to existing material without having to know any special commands or programming languages. All the contributor needs to do is click the "edit" link on the page, and he or she will be taken to an online form that allows them to edit the content.

The wiki was originally invented by a software developer named Ward Cunningham in 1995 to facilitate an online discussion about software development. Since then, the wild's practicality and ease of use has led to its adoption for countless business, social, and personal projects.

What about vandals?

Given that it's so easy to add content to or delete content from a wiki page, you're probably wondering how this kind of site could possibly work. After all, what's to prevent vandals from deleting information or adding misinformation?

A wiki works if it has a healthy, active community of contributors. Typing up a page of misinformation can take some time, but it only takes a subsequent visitor a minute or two to revert the page to a previous correct version. This tends to deter vandals.

The possibility of well-intentioned contributors inadvertently adding incorrect information to a wiki is another story. But again, having a healthy community means that someone else will be along soon to make corrections.

Some wikis (like "Twiki," which is described below) have a permissions system you can use to regulate read or write access to different sections of the site-an especially valuable feature for wikis used in business settings. Other wikis, such as "Wikipedia" (also described below) have developed their own unique systems for dealing with vandals and for handling disputes between contributors (you can imagine the tug-of-war created between contributors on hot-button topic pages).

Some wiki software

Since the wiki's creation in 1995, many versions have been written in many different programming languages. If you want to create a wiki of your own, here are a few options:

Wiki farms

(http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFarms): A wiki farm is a service that allows you to set up your own wiki without having to install, set up, or host the software yourself. Check out this page on the "MeatballWiki" site for a listing of both free and commercial wiki farms.

Twiki (www.twiki.org): Twiki is a complex program with a lot of features, among them a permission system you can use to regulate read and write access to different sections of the wiki, and a categorization system you can use to classify the individual pages. To use this program, you'll probably need somebody with some time and technical expertise to learn it and set it up. (For those of you who know something about programming languages, Twiki is an open-source, cgi-bin script written in Perl.)

For a more extensive list of user-installable wiki programs, check the listing at the bottom of the "What is a Wiki?" article by Nathan Matias on the SitePoint website at www.sitepoint.com/article/what-is-a-wiki. (SitePoint publishes an online magazine, newsletters, and books on Web development, and also hosts online forums.)

Sample wikis

If you've never seen a wiki, here are some good examples:

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org): Probably the largest wiki in the world, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that has grown to over 289,000 articles since it was created in January 2001. Anybody around the world can contribute to the articles-all you have to do is go to an article and click the "edit" button. Clicking on the "history" link will give you the full list of changes that have already been made to that article. If a vandal comes along and defaces or adds incorrect information to an article, the next person who comes along can use the history list to revert the article back to its previous correct version.

Quicksilver Metaweb (http://www.metaweb.com/wiki/wiki.pht ml): Science-fiction author Neal Stephenson created the Metaweb to annotate his novel Quicksilver, but his ultimate goal is to create a body of knowledge that will grow beyond the confines of this one novel. If you have questions about Quicksilver, this wiki should give you the answers. And you might also find many other articles that have nothing to do with the novel-articles on subjects contributors knew something about and found interesting.

Wikitravel (www.wikitravel.org): Inspired by Wikipedia, Wikitravel aims to create a free worldwide travel guide. The site currently has 1,930 destination guides and other articles. To contribute to any article just click the "edit this page" link.

[Author Affiliation]

By Rita Mikusch, Webmaster