What is a wiki word

A wiki ( WIK-ee) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.

Wikis are enabled by wiki software, otherwise known as wiki engines. A wiki engine, being a form of a content management system, differs from other web-based systems such as blog software, in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little inherent structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users.^[1] Wiki engines usually allow content to be written using a simplified markup language and sometimes edited with the help of a rich-text editor.^[2] There are dozens of different wiki engines in use, both standalone and part of other software, such as bug tracking systems. Some wiki engines are free and open-source, whereas others are proprietary. Some permit control over different functions (levels of access); for example, editing rights may permit changing, adding, or removing material. Others may permit access without enforcing access control. Other rules may be imposed to organize content.

There are hundreds of thousands of wikis in use, both public and private, including wikis functioning as knowledge management resources, note-taking tools, community websites, and intranets. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described wiki as «the simplest online database that could possibly work».^[3] «Wiki» (pronounced [wiki]^{[note 1]}) is a Hawaiian word meaning «quick».^[4][5][6]

The online encyclopedia project Wikipedia is the most popular wiki-based website, and is one of the most widely viewed sites in the world, having been ranked in the top twenty since 2007.^[7] Wikipedia is not a single wiki but rather a collection of hundreds of wikis, with each one pertaining to a specific language. The English-language Wikipedia has the largest collection of articles: as of February 2020, it has over 6 million articles.

Characteristics

In their book The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web, Ward Cunningham and co-author Bo Leuf described the essence of the Wiki concept:^{[8][9][page needed]}

• «A wiki invites all users—not just experts—to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki web site, using only a standard ‘plain-vanilla’ Web browser without any extra add-ons.»
• «Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page exists or not.»
• «A wiki is not a carefully crafted site created by experts and professional writers and designed for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the typical visitor/user in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the website landscape.»

A wiki enables communities of editors and contributors to write documents collaboratively. All that people require to contribute is a computer, Internet access, a web browser, and a basic understanding of a simple markup language (e.g. MediaWiki markup language). 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 non-linear, evolving, complex, and networked text, while also allowing for editor argument, debate, and interaction regarding the content and formatting.^[10] A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review by a moderator or gatekeeper before modifications are accepted and thus lead to changes on the website. Many wikis are open to alteration by the general public without requiring registration of user accounts. Many edits can be made in real-time and appear almost instantly online, but this feature facilitates 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 the open wikis produce a process of Social Darwinism. «… because of the openness and rapidity that wiki pages can be edited, the pages undergo an evolutionary selection process, not unlike 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.»^[11]

Editing

«Wikitext» redirects here. For the Wikipedia help page, see Help:Wikitext.

Source editing

Some wikis have an edit button or link directly on the page being viewed if the user has permission to edit the page. This can lead to a text-based editing page where participants can structure and format wiki pages with a simplified markup language, sometimes known as wikitext, wiki markup or wikicode (it can also lead to a WYSIWYG editing page; see the paragraph after the table below). For example, starting lines of text with asterisks could create a bulleted list. The style and syntax of wikitexts can vary greatly among wiki implementations,^{[example needed]} some of which also allow HTML tags.

Layout consistency

Wikis have favored 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 other users’ access.

Basic syntax

"Take some more [[tea]]," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

"I've had '''nothing''' yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."

"You mean you can't take ''less''," said the Hatter. "It's very easy to take ''more'' than nothing."

<p>"Take some more <a href="/wiki/Tea" title="Tea">tea</a>," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.</p>

<p>"I've had <b>nothing</b> yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."</p>

<p>"You mean you can't take <i>less</i>," said the Hatter. "It's very easy to take <i>more</i> than nothing."</p>

Visual editing

Wikis can also make WYSIWYG editing available to users, usually through a JavaScript control that translates graphically entered formatting instructions into the corresponding HTML tags or wikitext. In those implementations, the markup of a newly edited, marked-up version of the page is generated and submitted to the server transparently, shielding the user from this technical detail. An example of this is the VisualEditor on Wikipedia. WYSIWYG controls do not, however, always provide all the features available in wikitext, and some users prefer not to use a WYSIWYG editor. Hence, many of these sites offer some means to edit the wikitext directly.

Version history

Some wikis keep a record of changes made to wiki pages; often, every version of the page is stored. This means that authors can revert to an older version of the page should it be necessary because a mistake has been made, such as the content accidentally being deleted or the page has been vandalized to include offensive or malicious text or other inappropriate content.

Edit summary

«Edit summary» redirects here. For the Wikipedia help page, see Help:Edit summary.

Many wiki implementations, such as MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia, allow users to supply an edit summary when they edit a page. This is a short piece of text summarizing the changes they have made (e.g. «Corrected grammar» or «Fixed formatting in table»). It is not inserted into the article’s main text but is stored along with that revision of the page, allowing users to explain what has been done and why. This is similar to a log message when making changes in a revision-control system. This enables other users to see which changes have been made by whom and why, often in a list of summaries, dates and other short, relevant content, a list which is called a «log» or «history».

Navigation

Within the text of most pages, there are usually many hypertext links to other pages within the wiki. This form of non-linear navigation is more «native» to a wiki than structured/formalized navigation schemes. Users can also create any number of index or table-of-contents pages, with hierarchical categorization or whatever form of organization they like. These may be challenging to maintain «by hand», as multiple authors and users may create and delete pages in an ad hoc, unorganized manner. Wikis can provide one or more ways to categorize or tag pages to support the maintenance of such index pages. Some wikis, including the original, have a backlink feature, which displays all pages that link to a given page. It is also typically possible in a wiki to create links to pages that do not yet exist, as a way to invite others to share what they know about a subject new to the wiki. Wiki users can typically «tag» pages with categories or keywords, to make it easier for other users to find the article. For example, a user creating a new article on cold-weather biking might «tag» this page under the categories of commuting, winter sports and bicycling. This would make it easier for other users to find the article.

Linking and creating pages

Links are created using a specific syntax, the so-called «link pattern». Originally, most wikis^{[citation needed]} used CamelCase to name pages and create links. These are produced by capitalizing words in a phrase and removing the spaces between them (the word «CamelCase» is itself an example). While CamelCase makes linking easy, it also leads to links in a form that deviates from the standard spelling. To link to a page with a single-word title, one must abnormally capitalize one of the letters in the word (e.g. «WiKi» instead of «Wiki»). CamelCase-based wikis are instantly recognizable because they have many links with names such as «TableOfContents» and «BeginnerQuestions». A wiki can render the visible anchor of such links «pretty» by reinserting spaces, and possibly also reverting to lower case. This reprocessing of the link to improve the readability of the anchor is, however, limited by the loss of capitalization information caused by CamelCase reversal. For example, «RichardWagner» should be rendered as «Richard Wagner», whereas «PopularMusic» should be rendered as «popular music». There is no easy way to determine which capital letters should remain capitalized. As a result, many wikis now have «free linking» using brackets, and some disable CamelCase by default.

Searching

Most wikis offer at least a title search, and sometimes a full-text search. The scalability of the search depends on whether the wiki engine uses a database. Some wikis, such as PmWiki, use flat files.^[12] MediaWiki’s first versions used flat files, but it was rewritten by Lee Daniel Crocker in the early 2000s (decade) to be a database application.^{[citation needed]} Indexed database access is necessary for high speed searches on large wikis. Alternatively, external search engines such as Google Search can sometimes be used on wikis with limited searching functions to obtain more precise results.

History

WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki.^[13] Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in Portland, Oregon, in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the «Wiki Wiki Shuttle» bus that runs between the airport’s terminals. According to Cunningham, «I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for ‘quick’ and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web.»^[14][15]

Cunningham was, in part, inspired by the Apple HyperCard, which he had used. HyperCard, however, was single-user.^[16] Apple had designed a system allowing users to create virtual «card stacks» supporting links among the various cards. Cunningham developed Vannevar Bush’s ideas by allowing users to «comment on and change one another’s text.»^[2][17] Cunningham says his goals were to link together people’s experiences to create a new literature to document programming patterns, and to harness people’s natural desire to talk and tell stories with a technology that would feel comfortable to those not used to «authoring».^[16]

Wikipedia became the most famous wiki site, launched in January 2001 and entering the top ten most popular websites in 2007. In the early 2000s (decade), wikis were increasingly adopted in enterprise as collaborative software. Common uses included project communication, intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users. Some companies use wikis as their only collaborative software and as a replacement for static intranets, and some schools and universities use wikis to enhance group learning. There may be greater use of wikis behind firewalls than on the public Internet. On March 15, 2007, the word wiki was listed in the online Oxford English Dictionary.^[18]

Alternative definitions

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the word «wiki» was used to refer to both user-editable websites and the software that powers them; the latter definition is still occasionally in use.^[1] Wiki inventor Ward Cunningham wrote in 2014^[19] that the word «wiki» should not be used to refer to a single website, but rather to a mass of user-editable pages or sites so that a single website is not «a wiki» but «an instance of wiki». He wrote that the concept of wiki federation, in which the same content can be hosted and edited in more than one location in a manner similar to distributed version control, meant that the concept of a single discrete «wiki» no longer made sense.^[20]

Implementations

Wiki software is a type of collaborative software that runs a wiki system, allowing web pages to be created and edited using a common web browser. It may be implemented as a series of scripts behind an existing web server or as a standalone application server that runs on one or more web servers. The content is stored in a file system, and changes to the content are stored in a relational database management system. A commonly implemented software package is MediaWiki, which runs Wikipedia. Alternatively, personal wikis run as a standalone application on a single computer.

Wikis can also be created on a «wiki farm», where the server-side software is implemented by the wiki farm owner. Some wiki farms can also make private, password-protected wikis. Free wiki farms generally contain advertising on every page. For more information, see Comparison of wiki hosting services.

Trust and security

Controlling changes

Wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them. Thus, while wikis are very open, they provide a means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages. The most prominent, on almost every wiki, is the «Recent Changes» page—a specific list showing recent edits, or a list of edits made within a given time frame.^[21] Some wikis can filter the list to remove minor edits and edits made by automatic importing scripts («bots»).^[22] From the change log, other functions are accessible in most wikis: the revision history shows previous page versions and the diff feature highlights the changes between two revisions. Using the revision history, an editor can view and restore a previous version of the article. This gives great power to the author to eliminate edits. The diff feature can be used to decide whether or not this is necessary. A regular wiki user can view the diff of an edit listed on the «Recent Changes» page and, if it is an unacceptable edit, consult the history, restoring a previous revision; this process is more or less streamlined, depending on the wiki software used.^[23]

In case unacceptable edits are missed on the «recent changes» page, some wiki engines provide additional content control. It can be monitored to ensure that a page, or a set of pages, keeps its quality. A person willing to maintain pages will be warned of modifications to the pages, allowing them to verify the validity of new editions quickly. This can be seen as a very pro-author and anti-editor feature.^[24] A watchlist is a common implementation of this. Some wikis also implement «patrolled revisions», in which editors with the requisite credentials can mark some edits as not vandalism. A «flagged revisions» system can prevent edits from going live until they have been reviewed.^[25]

Trustworthiness and reliability of content

Critics of publicly editable wiki systems argue that these systems could be easily tampered with by malicious individuals («vandals») or even by well-meaning but unskilled users who introduce errors into the content, while proponents maintain that the community of users can catch such malicious or erroneous content and correct it.^[2] Lars Aronsson, a data systems specialist, summarizes the controversy as follows: «Most people when they first learn about the wiki concept, assume that a Web site that can be edited by anybody would soon be rendered useless by destructive input. It sounds like offering free spray cans next to a grey concrete wall. The only likely outcome would be ugly graffiti and simple tagging and many artistic efforts would not be long lived. Still, it seems to work very well.»^[13] High editorial standards in medicine and health sciences articles, in which users typically use peer-reviewed journals or university textbooks as sources, have led to the idea of expert-moderated wikis.^[26] Some wikis allow one to link to specific versions of articles, which has been useful to the scientific community, in that expert peer reviewers could analyse articles, improve them and provide links to the trusted version of that article.^[27] Noveck points out that «participants are accredited by members of the wiki community, who have a vested interest in preserving the quality of the work product, on the basis of their ongoing participation.» On controversial topics that have been subject to disruptive editing, a wiki author may restrict editing to registered users.^[28]

Security

The open philosophy of wiki – allowing anyone to edit content – does not ensure that every editor’s intentions are well-mannered. For example, vandalism (changing wiki content to something offensive, adding nonsense, maliciously removing content, or deliberately adding incorrect information, such as hoax information) can be a major problem. On larger wiki sites, such as those run by the Wikimedia Foundation, vandalism can go unnoticed for some period of time. Wikis, because of their open nature, are susceptible to intentional disruption, known as «trolling».
Wikis tend to take a soft-security approach to the problem of vandalism, making damage easy to undo rather than attempting to prevent damage. Larger wikis often employ sophisticated methods, such as bots that automatically identify and revert vandalism and JavaScript enhancements that show characters that have been added in each edit. In this way, vandalism can be limited to just «minor vandalism» or «sneaky vandalism», where the characters added/eliminated are so few that bots do not identify them and users do not pay much attention to them.^{[29][unreliable source]} An example of a bot that reverts vandalism on Wikipedia is ClueBot NG. ClueBot NG can revert edits, often within minutes, if not seconds. The bot uses machine learning in lieu of heuristics.^[30]

The amount of vandalism a wiki receives depends on how open the wiki is. For instance, some wikis allow unregistered users, identified by their IP addresses, to edit content, while others limit this function to just registered users.^[31]

Edit wars can also occur as users repetitively revert a page to the version they favor. In some cases, editors with opposing views of which content should appear or what formatting style should be used will change and re-change each other’s edits. This results in the page being «unstable» from a general user’s perspective, because each time a general user comes to the page, it may look different. Some wiki software allows an administrator to stop such edit wars by locking a page from further editing until a decision has been made on what version of the page would be most appropriate.^[10] Some wikis are in a better position than others to control behavior due to governance structures existing outside the wiki. For instance, a college teacher can create incentives for students to behave themselves on a class wiki they administer by limiting editing to logged-in users and pointing out that all contributions can be traced back to the contributors. Bad behavior can then be dealt with under university policies.^[12]

Potential malware vector

Malware can also be a problem for wikis, as users can add links to sites hosting malicious code. For example, a German Wikipedia article about the Blaster Worm was edited to include a hyperlink to a malicious website. Users of vulnerable Microsoft Windows systems who followed the link would be infected.^[10] A countermeasure is the use of software that prevents users from saving an edit that contains a link to a site listed on a blacklist of malicious sites.

Communities

Applications

The English Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis on the World Wide Web^[32] and ranks in the top 10 among all Web sites in terms of traffic.^[33] Other large wikis include the WikiWikiWeb, Memory Alpha, Wikivoyage, and Susning.nu, a Swedish-language knowledge base. Medical and health-related wiki examples include Ganfyd, an online collaborative medical reference that is edited by medical professionals and invited non-medical experts.^[11] Many wiki communities are private, particularly within enterprises. They are often used as internal documentation for in-house systems and applications. Some companies use wikis to allow customers to help produce software documentation.^[34] A study of corporate wiki users found that they could be divided into «synthesizers» and «adders» of content. Synthesizers’ frequency of contribution was affected more by their impact on other wiki users, while adders’ contribution frequency was affected more by being able to accomplish their immediate work.^[35] From a study of thousands of wiki deployments, Jonathan Grudin concluded careful stakeholder analysis and education are crucial to successful wiki deployment.^[36]

In 2005, the Gartner Group, noting the increasing popularity of wikis, estimated that they would become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50% of companies by 2009.^{[37][needs update]} Wikis can be used for project management.^{[38][39][unreliable source]} Wikis have also been used in the academic community for sharing and dissemination of information across institutional and international boundaries.^[40] In those settings, they have been found useful for collaboration on grant writing, strategic planning, departmental documentation, and committee work.^[41] In the mid-2000s, the increasing trend among industries toward collaboration placed a heavier impetus upon educators to make students proficient in collaborative work, inspiring even greater interest in wikis being used in the classroom.^[10]

Wikis have found some use within the legal profession and within the government. Examples include the Central Intelligence Agency’s Intellipedia, designed to share and collect intelligence, DKospedia, which was used by the American Civil Liberties Union to assist with review of documents about the internment of detainees in Guantánamo Bay;^[42] and the wiki of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, used to post court rules and allow practitioners to comment and ask questions. The United States Patent and Trademark Office operates Peer-to-Patent, a wiki to allow the public to collaborate on finding prior art relevant to the examination of pending patent applications. Queens, New York has used a wiki to allow citizens to collaborate on the design and planning of a local park. Cornell Law School founded a wiki-based legal dictionary called Wex, whose growth has been hampered by restrictions on who can edit.^[28]

In academic contexts, wikis have also been used as project collaboration and research support systems.^[43][44]

City wikis

A city wiki (or local wiki) is a wiki used as a knowledge base and social network for a specific geographical locale.^[45][46][47] The term ‘city wiki’ or its foreign language equivalent (e.g. German ‘Stadtwiki’) is sometimes also used for wikis that cover not just a city, but a small town or an entire region. A city wiki contains information about specific instances of things, ideas, people and places. Much of this information might not be appropriate for encyclopedias such as Wikipedia (e.g. articles on every retail outlet in a town), but might be appropriate for a wiki with more localized content and viewers. A city wiki could also contain information about the following subjects, that may or may not be appropriate for a general knowledge wiki, such as:

• Details of public establishments such as public houses, bars, accommodation or social centers
• Owner name, opening hours and statistics for a specific shop
• Statistical information about a specific road in a city
• Flavors of ice cream served at a local ice cream parlor
• A biography of a local mayor and other persons

WikiNodes

«WikiNode» redirects here. For the app for the Apple iPad, see WikiNodes.

WikiNodes 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.^[48] One way of finding a wiki on a specific subject is to follow the wiki-node network from wiki to wiki.

Participants

The four basic types of users who participate in wikis are reader, author, wiki administrator and system administrator. The system administrator is responsible for the installation and maintenance of the wiki engine and the container web server. The wiki administrator maintains wiki content and is provided additional functions about pages (e.g. page protection and deletion), and can adjust users’ access rights by, for instance, blocking them from editing.^[49]

Growth factors

A study of several hundred wikis showed that a relatively high number of administrators for a given content size is likely to reduce growth;^[50] that access controls restricting editing to registered users tends to reduce growth; that a lack of such access controls tends to fuel new user registration; and that higher administration ratios (i.e. admins/user) have no significant effect on content or population growth.^[51]

Conferences

Active conferences and meetings about wiki-related topics include:

• Atlassian Summit, an annual conference for users of Atlassian software, including Confluence.^[52]
• OpenSym (called WikiSym until 2014), an academic conference dedicated to research about wikis and open collaboration.
• SMWCon, a bi-annual conference for users and developers of Semantic MediaWiki.^[53]
• TikiFest, a frequently held meeting for users and developers of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware.^[54]
• Wikimania, an annual conference dedicated to the research and practice of Wikimedia Foundation projects like Wikipedia.

Former wiki-related events include:

• RecentChangesCamp (2006–2012), an unconference on wiki-related topics.
• RegioWikiCamp (2009–2013), a semi-annual unconference on «regiowikis», or wikis on cities and other geographic areas.^[55]

Legal environment

Joint authorship of articles, in which different users participate in correcting, editing, and compiling the finished product, can also cause editors to become tenants in common of the copyright, making it impossible to republish without permission of all co-owners, some of whose identities may be unknown due to pseudonymous or anonymous editing.^[10] Where persons contribute to a collective work such as an encyclopedia, there is, however, no joint ownership if the contributions are separate and distinguishable.^[56] Despite most wikis’ tracking of individual contributions, the action of contributing to a wiki page is still arguably one of jointly correcting, editing, or compiling, which would give rise to joint ownership. Some copyright issues can be alleviated through the use of an open content license. Version 2 of the GNU Free Documentation License includes a specific provision for wiki relicensing; Creative Commons licenses are also popular. When no license is specified, an implied license to read and add content to a wiki may be deemed to exist on the grounds of business necessity and the inherent nature of a wiki, although the legal basis for such an implied license may not exist in all circumstances.^{[citation needed]}

Wikis and their users can be held liable for certain activities that occur on the wiki. If a wiki owner displays indifference and forgoes controls (such as banning copyright infringers) that he could have exercised to stop copyright infringement, he may be deemed to have authorized infringement, especially if the wiki is primarily used to infringe copyrights or obtains a direct financial benefit, such as advertising revenue, from infringing activities.^[10] In the United States, wikis may benefit from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects sites that engage in «Good Samaritan» policing of harmful material, with no requirement on the quality or quantity of such self-policing.^[57] It has also been argued, however, that a wiki’s enforcement of certain rules, such as anti-bias, verifiability, reliable sourcing, and no-original-research policies, could pose legal risks.^[58] When defamation occurs on a wiki, theoretically, all users of the wiki can be held liable, because any of them had the ability to remove or amend the defamatory material from the «publication.» It remains to be seen whether wikis will be regarded as more akin to an internet service provider, which is generally not held liable due to its lack of control over publications’ contents, than a publisher.^[10] It has been recommended that trademark owners monitor what information is presented about their trademarks on wikis, since courts may use such content as evidence pertaining to public perceptions. Joshua Jarvis notes, «Once misinformation is identified, the trademark owner can simply edit the entry.»^[59]

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

• Wiki at Curlie
• Exploring with Wiki, an interview with Ward Cunningham by Bill Verners
• Murphy, Paula (April 2006). Topsy-turvy World of Wiki. University of California.
• Ward Cunningham’s correspondence with etymologists
• WikiIndex and WikiApiary, directories of wikis
• WikiMatrix, a website for comparing wiki software and hosts
• wikiteam on GitHub

What is a WikiWord?

A WikiWord consists of two or more words with initial capitals, run together. WikiWords are used to refer to topics.

WikiWords refer to topics, and topic names are WikiWords. When you type a WikiWord, you create a link to that topic, or a link to create that topic if it doesn’t exist yet. You type WebHome and on saving the page this becomes WebHome. It’s as easy as that.

WikiWord linking is easy to use:

• You don’t have to know the full path to where the topic is stored — you just type the name
• You don’t need to write HTML
• Easy linking leads to interesting texts with links placed in context

WikiWords are styled like this because:

• It makes Wiki hyperlinks instantly recognizable
• It leads to interesting Wiki topics
• It avoids over-general topics because at least two words are required

Note that acronyms are also auto-linked, but only if the topic already exists.

Syntax of a WikiWord

• Uppercase letter(s)
• Lowercase letter(s) or numbers(s)
• Uppercase letter(s)
• Optional lowercase or uppercase letter(s) or number(s)

WikiWord syntax in Extended Backus.Naur form (EBNF):

    wikiWord        = upperLetters , lowerNumLetters , upperLetters , { alphaNum } ;
    upperLetters    = upperCase , { upperCase } ;
    lowerNumLetters = lowerNum , { lowerNum } ;
    alphaNum        = upperCase | lowerCase | digit ;
    lowerNum        = lowerCase | digit ;
    lowerCase       = "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | "g" | "h" | "i"
                    | "j" | "k" | "l" | "m" | "n" | "o" | "p" | "q" | "r"
                    | "s" | "t" | "u" | "v" | "w" | "x" | "y" | "z" ;
    upperCase       = "A" | "B" | "C" | "D" | "E" | "F" | "G" | "H" | "I"
                    | "J" | "K" | "L" | "M" | "N" | "O" | "P" | "Q" | "R"
                    | "S" | "T" | "U" | "V" | "W" | "X" | "Y" | "Z" ;
    digit           = "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | "8" | "9" ;

Preventing automatic linking

Sometimes you want to be able to enter a WikiWord without the automatic
linking. When editing in TML, simply put an exclamation mark (!) before the word. !WikiWord WikiWord will be displayed as WikiWord WikiWord.

Good examples of WikiWords

• WikiWord
• GoodStyle
• VersionFiveDotThree
• ReleaseVersion5dot3
• AVeryLongWikiTopicNameIsAlsoPossible: wherever an uppercase or lowercase letter is allowed, a group of letters of the same case is allowed
• YearTwoThousand
• Nine2Five: Note that numbers are considered to be lowercase letters in WikiWords

Bad examples of WikiWords:

• Web: Name without the uppercase letter(s), lowercase letter(s), uppercase letter(s) sequence
• 5Alive: Name beginning with a number
• Know-How: Name with dashes in between

Variations in linking

When you write a WikiWord, it becomes a link. There are more ways

• To write a custom link label, use bracket notation: [[AccessControl][access control]] — this becomes: access control
• To link to a topic in another web, write: Sandbox.WebSearch — this becomes: WebSearch
• To link to a topic in another subweb write: Sandbox.Subweb.WebSearch.
• To show the web name in the link use bracket notation: [[Sandbox.WebHome]] — this becomes: Sandbox.WebHome
• To link to a topic on another Wiki site, use: Foswiki:Main/WebHome — this becomes: Foswiki:Main/WebHome (sites are defined in the InterwikiPlugin)
• To link to a part on the same page, write a «#» followed by the name of an anchor. The anchor is a «#» followed by a name which must be a WikiName. Example #MyAnchor. You can also link to an anchor on another page: System.WebHome#MyAnchor.
• To link to a header on the same page, write a «#» followed by the header text, with spaces replaced by underscores (and ! removed): [[#Good_examples_of_WikiWords]] becomes: #Good_examples_of_WikiWords. You can also link to a header on another page: System.WebHome#Disclaimer becomes: WebHome#Disclaimer.

Hints

• Insert WikiWords wherever you can. Rich linking helps to make a Wiki successful.
• Be specific. All topics in a web share one name space. For example, instead of FunctionalSpec write BreadSlicerFunctionalSpec because other projects might also have a functional spec topic.
• Create topics with singular names. Plural WikiWords are automatically linked to the singular topic, i.e. the link WikiWords links to the topic WikiWord (works only in English).
• Sometimes you have to be creative to find a good WikiName. Examples:
  • To create a topic about the the Bread Slicer 1.2 product, use BreadSlicer1dot2 or BreadSlicer1pt2, but not BreadSlicer1.2.
  • Numbers are considered lowercase which makes Year2K and Y2K WikiWords but not Y2000 and Y2k.
• Turn acronyms into WikiWords, i.e. take FaqIndex for a «FAQ index» topic.
• It is possible to turn off the auto-linking of WikiWords and to rely only on the bracket notation using the NOAUTOLINK preference setting.

  When linking to a WebHome topic in another web, the link will be rendered as the name of the web, e.g. Sandbox.WebHome becomes Sandbox.

  Dots (.) are used as seperators between webs, subwebs, and topics. It is not possible to use dots in topic names. Foswiki does not attempt to guess if a dot could be part of a topic name.

Related Topics: TopicMarkupLanguage

‘Wiki’ is one of the most prevalent buzzwords on the Internet, right up there with ‘cloud computing’ and ‘responsive design’.

When you hear the word ‘wiki’, you most likely think immediately of Wikipedia, the famous online encyclopedia. Then there’s WikiLeaks, the source of leaked government secrets. With both sites bearing the same weird root word, you would be forgiven for thinking they’re related. They’re not. At least not in the way you might think.

What is a ‘wiki’ defined as today? This term «wiki» actually means quick in Hawaiian. The journey from that definition to today’s definition of «a website that allows collaborative editing of its content and structure by its users» is quite the interesting story, best told by Ward Cunningham, the father of the modern wiki.

The important part of wikis—what makes them different from any other type of website—is collaborative editing by the users. Think about that for a moment: the ability for the users of a wiki to collaboratively edit it. If you can read it, you can edit it. It seems simple at first, yet profoundly powerful in practice—and it’s what both Wikipedia and WikiLeaks have in common.

That’s what we’re going to explore: the benefits a wiki can provide to a business, the sort of problems it can solve, why you might use a wiki, and what sort of options you have for setting up a wiki for yourself. It’s a lot to cover, so let’s keep things moving.

What Wikis Do

To really appreciate what wikis in and of themselves do for your business, we need to first travel back in time, back to the original days of the web. By looking at what the first wiki was intended to do, the current state of wiki software will make a lot more sense.

I mentioned Ward Cunningham, father of the wiki, earlier. On the front page of his own wiki, he gives some insight into the origins of wikis and what they’re designed to do.

The idea of a «Wiki» may seem odd at first, but dive in, explore its links and it will soon seem familiar. «Wiki» is a composition system; it’s a discussion medium; it’s a repository; it’s a mail system; it’s a tool for collaboration. We don’t know quite what it is, but we do know it’s a fun way to communicate asynchronously across the network.

I love that summary. In the beginning, Ward and his colleagues didn’t even know what wikis were supposed to do exactly. But they knew it was fun.

From that short summary we can pull out some of the main themes of wikis: composing, discussing, hyperlinking, collaborating, communicating.

Notice something about those words? They’re all verbs. They’re what wikis do.

1. Quick Composing With Wikis

How do wikis work? At their core, wikis are composition systems. They’re trying to make it as easy as possible to write on a webpage. This is so important because it’s something that separates wikis from your average website. 

Most people only visit a site like Wikipedia to read something, just like they do most websites, so this aspect of wikis is often lost on the casual observer. But back in the late 1990s, when Ward Cunningham built his wiki, it was the easy authoring of web content that he had in mind.

At that time, web pages were almost always written by hand in HTML. HTML is fine as a markup language, and it still powers the web today. But it can be a cumbersome language to type by hand, and frequently gets in the way of just writing. This is especially true when you try to do more than type simple paragraphs. If you want to add any sort of structure or formatting to a document, the HTML markup quickly swallows up the content.

Ward wanted a tool that let people write web pages quickly (see how the name wiki comes back into play here?) and HTML wasn’t quick enough. So within his wiki system was a basic text formatting system. It was simpler and easier to type than HTML tags, and was less obtrusive when writing and editing wiki pages. Plus, it enabled anyone to edit a wiki, without having to know how to edit HTML code.

And so in turn, quick and easy composition has become a cornerstone of wiki design. It should be faster and easier to write and edit text in a wiki than hand-writing HTML code. The wiki syntax—which is somewhat similar to the now-popular Markdown syntax—is designed to help decrease friction when writing and editing wiki pages, which in turn helps users to write and edit more frequently.

Discover great Wiki WordPress Themes on Elements or ThemeForest:  

2. Wikis Are Great For Collaborating

The Internet has simplified communications to such a degree that today, talking to someone on the other side of the world isn’t even that exciting. In the early days of the Web that power was all the more tantalizing. Today’s Internet-powered communication apps didn’t yet exist, so the web itself was the primary way to communicate. That’s part of what made the wiki such a fascinating product, it’s great for discussing, collaborating, and communicating.

Flexible Access for Editing Wiki Pages

We already looked at how the wiki made things quicker to edit than your average web page. But the wiki allowed for something else unique: anyone who could read a wiki page had the ability to edit that wiki page. In its most open sense, a wiki is editable by any visitor.

It was this feature that Ward was referring to when he called the wiki «a discussion medium; a mail system; a tool for collaboration.» These days, wiki software allows for more control over who can edit the wiki, but the power of the feature remains the same. You can make a wiki into all of those things Ward mentioned and more. 

Editing doesn’t just have to mean working together to make a site—it can also mean just updating a wiki page about a project to let others know how it’s progressing, for instance. When you start thinking about it in the context of business, the potential gets pretty exciting, doesn’t it?

3. Hyperlinking Powers All Wikis

Hyperlinking is certainly nothing new—it’s been around since the dawn of the Web. It’s the first word in the acronym «HTML». But how the first wiki handled hyperlinks was what made it so special, and that’s why linking has become a cornerstone of wiki design to this day.

Adding Links to Wiki Pages is Quick

Just like everything else we’ve looked at so far, adding and creating links within the wiki is designed to be fast and easy. Notice I said within the wiki—it’s internal links that are designed to be so easy to make. 

The specific syntax for creating an internal link differs between different wiki systems, but what they all have in common is efficiency. That, among other reasons, is why it’s so easy to get lost in Wikipedia, since there’s always more info to explore among the dozens of links on any page.

The Power of Linking to Future Wiki Pages

Beyond just being quick to add, something else that’s special about links in wikis is that you can link to something that doesn’t exist. What do I mean by that? Well, let me illustrate: what if you’re writing a wiki page, and you want to go more in-depth on a particular subject? You can create a link to a page about that subject, even though the other page doesn’t yet exist.

Take a moment to think about that. It’s simple, yet profound.

And it fits in so neatly with the vision Ward Cunningham had for his wiki in the first place. He wanted it to be a fertile place for communication, discourse, and the sharing of knowledge. 

Here we have a simple and straight-forward means for one user to request further thought and discussion on a particular topic. Or, used a different way, the means for a user to map out subjects he wants to elaborate on in the future. A natural to-do list, if you will, one that automatically makes the original project better when the tasks are completed.

These two aspects of linking within wikis come together into something more special than your average hyperlink. They help facilitate growth within the wiki. It’s by means of this sort of linking that wikis start becoming magical.

Are Wikis Right for My Business?

So, in a nutshell, wikis:

• Make it quick and easy to write information on web pages.
• Facilitate communication and discussion, since it’s easy for those who are reading a wiki page to edit that page themselves.
• Allow for quick and easy linking between wiki pages, including pages that don’t yet exist on the wiki.

But that’s still a bit abstract. It might help you see how Wikipedia because such a success, but it’s a bit harder to see how it can benefit your business. For that, here’s some specific examples of what a wiki can do for you. I think you’ll be convinced they’re the perfect solution for your business.

1. Wikis Are the Documentation Dream

Every business wants detailed, well-maintained documentation. And yet, it so often feels like a pipe dream. Back in the day, maybe your business documentation was a detailed employee handbook, meticulously researched, maybe spiral-bound, and made in-house. But it’s the 21st century; nobody wants to use something like that anymore.

You could try modernizing things, going digital with your documentation. Perhaps you could have some Word documents in shared folders for your entire company. That would certainly give you some nice features. It’s digital, syncs to your different employees computers, and it’s easy to write and edit… well, as long as everyone has Microsoft Word.

But, what if you want to reference a document while you’re in a meeting, and you don’t have your computer right in front of you? How about trying to search for a particular procedure, or an important technique in those Word docs? After all, it’d take a lot of Word docs to document everything. Then, it’d be way too easy for someone to accidentally delete a document, or edit out something important, and the only way to fix the mistake would be to restore from a backup.

And we haven’t even talked about trying to associate different documents with each other. How do you connect documents together when you’re talking about Word files in a shared folder? Let’s look at a simple scenario:

The Problem With Organizing Business Documents

Let’s say you have a few different departments all writing their own documentation. How do you organize all of those documents? Just throwing them all inside one shared folder will get messy quickly. So you start putting some of those documents inside folders. 

Let’s say you organize those folders by department. 

• Now what happens if a document could apply to more than one department, and therefore fits into more than one folder? 
• Do you place a copy of that document in each folder? 
• What happens when someone edits one of those documents? 
• How do those changes make their way to the copies of that same document?

See how things can get out of hand quickly? I don’t mean to bash on Word documents in shared folders. If a system like that genuinely works for you, I’m happy for you. But if you’ve encountered any of the issues I just described, then you owe it to yourself to examine a wiki as a solution for your business.

2. Making That Dream a Reality

How can a wiki help to make your documentation dreams a reality?

Think about office memos, the ones you feel like you’re always resending. With a wiki, they turn into a single page with a link you can display somewhere everyone will see it. When it comes time to edit that memo, it’s simple and easy. And the best part is, the link will always be accurate, even after you’ve edited the memo. Cool, right?

Create a Searchable, Online Product Catalog

Do you have a large and complex catalog of products? Imagine it neatly organized in one place. A place that’s searchable, easily editable, and links related products together. That’s a wiki, my friend. Neat, huh?

Make a Knowledge Base for Your Team

What if you have a sales-based business? With a wiki you can help your salesmen keep track of their sales numbers, client information, or sales tips and tricks, all in one convenient place. And you can set up your wiki so that it’s accessible to them when they’re out in the field, from any type of mobile device. Now that feels like the 21st century, doesn’t it?

Build a Wiki Intranet for Business Training

Now, think about how a wiki can revolutionize employee training. The wiki becomes a consistent place to put business policies, best practices, standards, and guidelines. All the things that you’ve learned over time, a new employee can benefit from right away just by reading the wiki. You can stop worrying about teaching the same thing over and over again. Write it once now, and it will teach everyone in the future—and will be easy to edit when things change.

A wiki can be home to all of this and more. Remember what makes a wiki unique: they’re easy to edit, accessible from anything with a web browser, with simple and intuitive linking between pages. These features help facilitate the sort of environment where quality documentation like you’ve always wanted can grow and thrive.

Make Your Own Wiki (Take the Next Step)

I hope by now you appreciate what a wiki does, and how it can benefit a small business, school, your personal life, and anything else. Now, all you’ll need to do is to make your own wiki, and put it to use in your work. 

You can set up a wiki with MediaWiki on your own server, or in one click with most web hosting services. Alternatively, you could use a hosted wiki service like PBworks or Wikia. The basics are the same, no matter which you choose.

You can also use WordPress to setup your wiki with. We offer popular WordPress wiki themes on our ThemeForest marketplace. They’re great for making corporate intranets, collaborate knowledge based sites, helpdesk setups, and other types of business wikis.

But it can still be a bit complicated getting your wiki started, and learning how to actually use it to create, edit, and link content. That’s where our next tutorial comes in. Here’s everything you need to get your wiki up and running.

To learn even more about Wikis, review this tutorial:

Editorial Note: This post was originally published in 2014. It has been comprehensively revised to make current, accurate, and up to date by our staff—with special assistance from Laura Spencer.

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Zach LeBar is a freelance web and graphic designer. Billing himself as a web craftsman, he takes great pride in his work, giving time and attention to the details and nuance of what he builds. Zach also dabbles in the world of amateur photography, and has a passion for writing.