Intro to Wikis

What is a wiki?

Definition: A wiki is a collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work". One of the best-known wikis is Wikipedia. - from Wikipedia

Brief history of wikis

Created by Ward Cunningham in 1994
inspired by Apple's Hypercard
named after the Honolulu wiki-wiki express bus

What makes a wiki?

The Read/Write Web - Wiki users are readers, authors and editors
Promotes topic association between pages with easy linking
Not a carefully crafted site but is intended to involve the visitor in the process of creation and collaboration
Generally changes take place immediately and are not reviewed

Mediawiki - the software behind Wikipedia

Presentation and editing in one tool.
Requires only a web browser
Open source - PHP, MySQL

Wiki markup

does not require knowledge of html
very easy to create links and new pages or articles
some WYSIWYG tools are available

Trust and Security

Wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them.
Issues that arise are:
- vandalism
- bias
- self-promotion
- notability of an article
- credibility of authors
  - See Essjay scandal

Tools to help you assess

Search - probably the easiest way to find what you are looking for in a wiki
History - view the evolution of a page, who made what changes when. Changes can be rolled back at any time
Recent changes page - view the most recent chagnes on the entire site
Discussion pages - exit for each article and are a place for contributors to discuss and ask questions about the article
Wikipedia Policies and Guidelines
User pages - as a logged in user this is your space to identify who you are. This space can also function as a sandbox for trying out markup.
Notes, References and Further Reading

Resources: