PESWiki:Wiki

From PESWiki

A wiki is a website that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change available content, and typically without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. The term wiki also can refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a Web site, or to certain specific wiki sites, including the computer science site (the original wiki) WikiWikiWeb..

Key characteristics

A wiki enables documents to be written very collaboratively in a simple markup language using a web browser. A single page in a wiki is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire body of pages, which are usually highly interconnected via hyperlinks, is "the wiki"; in effect, a wiki is actually a very simple, easy-to-use user-maintained database for searching or even creating information.

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. Most wikis are open to the general public without the need to register any user account. Sometimes session log-in is requested to acquire a "wiki-signature" cookie for autosigning edits. Many edits, however, can be made in real-time, and appear almost instantaneously online. This can lead to abuse of the system. Private wiki servers require user authentication to edit, sometimes even to read pages.

Most wikis are based on a web server. The server can be open to everybody on the Internet, or part of a private LAN, with limited access. There is also a version of wiki that can be shared between peers, with no need for a web server. Such Peer-to-peer wiki system is integrated with a P2P version-control system that takes care of versioning and distribution of pages.

Wikis and content management systems

Wikis have shared, and encouraged, several features with generalized content management systems (CMS) which are used by enterprises and communities-of-practice. Those looking to compare a CMS with an enterprise wiki should consider these basic features:

1. The name of an article is embedded in the hyperlink.
2. Articles can be created or edited at anytime by anyone (with certain limitations for protected articles).
3. Articles are editable through the web browser.
4. Each article provides one-click access to the history/versioning page, which also supports version differencing ("diff") and retrieving prior versions.
5. Each article provides one-click access to a discussion page particular to that article.
6. The most recent additions/modifications of articles can be monitored actively or passively.

None of these are particular to a wiki, and some have developed independently. Still the concept of a wiki unequivocally refers to this core set of features. Taken together, they fit the generative nature of the Internet (as scholar Jonathan Zittrain has labeled it), in encouraging each user to help build it. It is yet to be studied whether an enterprise wiki encourages more usage, or leads to more knowledgeable community members, than other content management systems.

Wiki communities

Many wiki communities are private, particularly within enterprises as collaborative software. They are often used as internal documentation for in-house systems and applications. The democratic, all-encompassing nature of Wikipedia is a significant factor in its growth, while many other wikis are highly specialized. There also exist WikiNodes which are pages on wikis that describe related wikis. They are usually organized as neighbors and delegates. A neighbor wiki is simply a wiki that may discuss similar content or may otherwise be of interest. A delegate wiki is a wiki that agrees to have certain content delegated to that wiki. One way of finding a wiki on a specific subject is to follow the wiki-node network from wiki to wiki; another is to take a Wiki "bus tour," for example: Wikipedia's Tour Bus Stop. Domain names containing "wiki" are growing in popularity to support specific niches.

For those interested in creating their own wiki, there are many publicly available "wiki farms", some of which can also make private, password-protected wikis. PeanutButterWiki, BrainKeeper, Socialtext, Wetpaint, and Wikia are popular examples of such services. The English-language Wikipedia is the largest wiki. The other Wikipedias fill many of the remaining upper slots. Other large wikis include the WikiWikiWeb, Memory Alpha, Wikitravel, World66 and Susning.nu, a Swedish-language knowledge base. The largest wikis are listed and updated on Meta-Wiki. Many public wikis are listed at WikiIndex, which is a wiki of wikis.

Science and technology

This is a partial list of scientific wikis (sites based on the wiki model).

• PESWiki.com (http://peswiki.com/) - Site on alternative energy generation, development, and utilization.
• Dispersive PDE Wiki (http://tosio.math.toronto.edu/wiki/index.php/DispersiveWiki:About) - A wiki concerned with the well-posedness of various non-linear dispersive and wave equations.
• Palaeos (http://www.palaeos.org/) - a paleontology and history of earth knowledge base.
• OpenWetWare (http://openwetware.org/wiki/Main_Page) - a wiki that promotes sharing and dissemination of knowledge related to biological research.

Small Business

• Smallbusiness.com (http://www.smallbusiness.com/wiki/Main_Page) - a wiki for those who own and run small businesses.

References and external articles

• Aigrain, Philippe (2003). The Individual and the Collective in Open Information Communities (http://www.debatpublic.net/Members/paigrain/texts/icoic.html). Invited talk at the 16th Bled Electronic Commerce Conference, Bled, Slovenia, June 11 2003.
• Aronsson, Lars (2002). Operation of a Large Scale, General Purpose Wiki Website: Experience from susning.nu's first nine months in service (http://aronsson.se/wikipaper.html). Paper presented at the 6th International ICCC/IFIP Conference on Electronic Publishing, November 8, 2002, Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic.
• Benkler, Yochai (2002). Coase's penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm. The Yale Law Journal. v.112, n.3, pp.369–446.
• Choate, Mark (2006). What makes an enterprise wiki? (http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/145-Wikis-in-the-enterprise) CMS Watch. April 28, 2006.
• Cunningham, Ward and Leuf, Bo (2001): The Wiki Way. Quick Collaboration on the Web. Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-71499-X.
• Delacroix, Jérôme (2005): Les wikis, espaces de l'intelligence collective, M2 Editions, Paris, ISBN 2-9520514-4-5.
• Ebersbach, Anja, Glaser, Markus and Heigl, Richard (2005): Wiki. Web Collaboration. Springer, ISBN 3-540-25995-3.
• Jansson, Kurt (2002): "Wikipedia. Die Freie Enzyklopädie." (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Kurt_Jansson/Vortrag_auf_dem_19C3) Lecture at the 19th Chaos Communications Congress (19C3), December 27, 2002 intermot (http://my.opera.com/intermot) Berlin, Germany.
• Klobas, Jane and others (2006): Wikis: Tools for Information Work and Collaboration. Oxford, UK, Chandos Publishing, ISBN 1-84334-179-4.
• Lange, Christoph (ed., 2006). Wikis und Blogs – Planen, Einrichten, Verwalten (http://www.cul.de/wikiblog.html). Computer- und Literaturverlag, ISBN 3-936546-44-4.
• Mattison, David (2003). "QuickiWiki, Swiki, TWiki, ZWiki, and the Plone Wars: Wiki as PIM and Collaborative Content Tool." (http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr03/mattison.shtml) Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals, v. 11, no. 4 (April 2003): 32-48
• Möller, Erik (2003). Loud and clear: How Internet media can work (http://opencultures.t0.or.at/oc/participants/moeller). Presentation at the Open Cultures conference, June 5 & 6, 2003 Vienna, Austria.
• Möller, Erik (2003). Tanz der Gehirne (http://www.humanist.de/erik/tdg/). Telepolis, May 9–30. Four parts: (i) "Das Wiki-Prinzip", (ii) "Alle gegen Brockhaus", (iii) "Diderots Traumtagebuch", und (iv) "Diesen Artikel bearbeiten".
• Nakisa, Ramin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ramin_Nakisa) (2003). "Wiki Wiki Wah Wah" (http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/images/stories/pdf/lud29-Collaborative_Software-Wiki.pdf). Linux User and Developer v.29, pp.42–48. sanyo (http://my.opera.com/sanyodenki)
• Remy, Melanie. (2002). Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Online Information Review. v.26, n.6, p.434
• New Media: Who are the real winners now we've all gone Wiki-crazy? (http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1096343.ece)
• Father of Wiki Speaks Out on Community and Collaborative Development (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1939982,00.asp), eWeek, March 20 [2006]
• Wikis (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wiki.htm) at HowStuffWorks.
• "Information Wants to be Liquid" (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66382,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2:) — Wired magazine article
• Wiki Engines (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines)
• What's a Wiki? (http://www.themedia.co.za/article.aspx?articleid=249581&area=/media_columnistsnet_savvy/)
• Wiki Science (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science)
• How to start a wiki (http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki) — help write the book on starting a wiki
• What makes an 'enterprise' wiki (http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/145-Wikis-in-the-enterprise) Critical review of wikis in the enterprise
• WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors) (the first wiki)
• Science in the Web Age: Joint Efforts (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7068/full/438548a.html) on wikis and the scientific community
• www.wikimatrix.org: A side-by-side comparison of many different wiki installations.
• New Media: Who are the real winners now we've all gone Wiki-Loopy? (subscription required to read beyond intro) (http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1096343.ece)
• Operation of a Large Scale, General Purpose Wiki Website (http://aronsson.se/wikipaper.html) Book abstract
• Html => Wiki converter (http://www.uni-bonn.de/~manfear/html2wiki-tables.php)
• Wikipedia contributors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges), Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. <http://en.wikipedia.org>.