What Is A Wiki?

Date First Published: 9th September 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: Web Services

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 4/10

Learn more about what a wiki is in this article.

A wiki is a collaborative website edited by an online community of users. Anyone can create content and edit each other's content at any time, allowing multiple people to share their knowledge of certain topics and update information. Wiki sites have wiki software that runs on the web server, such as MediaWiki. Some wiki software is open-source, whilst other software is proprietary.

An example of a wiki is Wikipedia, the largest wiki on the internet that contains articles about almost everything. Fandom is another platform that is divided into hundreds of thousands of wikis. The wikis are maintained by a community of users who share an interest in the topic. Most wiki software has additional features, such as edit summaries, allowing people to enter a short piece of text, summarising the changes they have made and a search feature that allows them to search for pages by entering words and phrases.

Note:

The term 'wiki' comes from the Hawaiian phrase 'wiki wiki', which means 'very quick'. If a site had hundreds or thousands of users adding and updating content on a regular basis, the website could grow very quickly.

Advantages and Disadvantages Of A Wiki

• Since multiple users around the world can collaborate together, content can be created, updated, and maintained much faster.
• Wiki web software keeps track of each edit made, making it easy to revert to a previous version or compare the differences between a user's edits.
• It often contains a user-friendly interface, making it easy for most users to use the wiki software.
• Changes to pages are almost instant. As soon as a user has finished editing a page, once they click 'publish', those changes will appear instantly to everyone if they reload the page.

• They are prone to misinformation and vandalism. Since they can be edited by anyone at any time, information that a wiki contains at a certain time could be outdated, a work-in progress, vandalism, or completely incorrect. This is why people need to be careful and check sources to ensure that the information is correct.
• Privacy risks. Since anyone can edit, users can accidentally share confidential information that will appear to everyone and even if removed, it can still be seen in the edit history.
• Editors may not always agree on decisions in relation to the content.
• It always requires an internet connection to collaborate, but technologies to make print versions of articles are improving.

History

The first known wiki was WikiWikiWeb. In Portland, Oregon, Ward Cunninghambegan to develop WikiWikiWeb in 1994. He installed it on the domain name 'c2.com' on 25th March 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee instructing him to take the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" bus that runs between the airport's terminals. In order to avoid naming it quick-web, Cunningham claims that "I chose wiki-wiki as a rhyming alternative for "quick."

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