Before the wiki, making a web document was a closed-off, private affair. Then *cue trumpet fanfare* Wikipedia (and all its little wiki children) arrived! Wikipedia, like blogs and Facebook, has transcended the gap between techies and luddites and entered the dictionary of common modern parlance. Wikipedia is different: it's a wiki (as the name suggests), or rather a large number of wikis, which means that it is a collection of web pages created, edited and augmented by the public. But the really clever part is that there is no "Big Book of Wikis" that explains the intricacies of HTML for potential wiki writers because there doesn't have to be. A wiki uses a simplified markup language so that us thickos can understand what we're doing, which is better for everyone really.
Wikis are what people like Vannevar Bush and Tim Berners-Lee dreamed of when they were pioneering the internet: a system whereby anyone at all could contribute to a webpage, each man furthering the knowledge of those around him. The first Wiki was created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, who went to Hawaii and got the "wiki wiki" bus between Honolulu airport terminals ("wiki" is Hawaiian for "quick"). He created WikiWikiWeb in March 1995, inspired in part by Apple's HyperCard, a program that allowed users to provide links in "card stacks". Wikis were soon seen to be a great collaborative medium and Cunningham wrote a book with Bo Leuf outlining the basic principles of wiki:
1) Anyone can compose or edit a wiki without needing a special browser or program
2) Wikis allow users to make links to other wiki pages which are relevant to the page
3) Wikis aren't really meant to just be looked at by casual visitors. Users are invited to contribute to wikis.
While a great number of people disregard the third statement, the first two statements are very important. Absolutely anyone can make a wiki and you don't have to be especially well-versed in HTML or know what IP address means. Wikis do the hard work so you don't have to. For example, mistakes ("Neil Young was born in 2023 and is a moose") can be corrected easily: just hit the "edit" button, correct the mistakes, and hit "save" ("Neil Young was born in 1945 and is a Canadian singer, songwriter and film director"). The moment when wikis entered the public conscience was a little like presenting a credit card to the spend-happy teenage girls of the world for the first time: everyone just went a bit crazy. The wiki was a big step forward.
This is how a wiki works.
Step 1: I provide some information.
Step 2: Someone elso adds some information and hits "save".
Step 3: someone provides some useless stuff
Step 4: The finished piece.
So that is your actual wiki: very simple, but easily the best collaborative medium on the web. It doesn't even have to be about furthering the knowledge of mankind - you could start a wiki for such a simple purpose as making a kit list for a school trip. Obviously wikis are going to look better than felt pen scrawled on paper. But hey. It's the credit crunch.
Wikis are a people thing. We can't go out and tell six billion people about Neil Young, but putting it on a wiki lets lots of people see it and add stuff to it so that everyone learns. It truly is a brilliant solution to collaboration and information sharing. Wikitastic.
If you want to start your own wiki, here are some links to wiki creating sites:
For an explanation of wikis far greater than my own, watch this video.
This is brilliant.
ReplyDeleteYou manage to hit the nail on the head every time. The first paragraph is an excellent description of the wiki, and you are spot on about bush and berners-lee. I love the "...in plain english" style of your picture examples.
A+