So what the heck is a Wiki?

A wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing.

The term wiki is a shortened form of wiki wiki which is from the native language of Hawaii (Hawaiian), where it is commonly used as an adjective to denote something "quick" or "fast".

The term Wiki can also refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a website.

In essence, a wiki is a simplification of the process of creating HTML pages combined with a system that records each individual change that occurs over time, so that at any time, a page can be reverted to any of its previous states. A wiki system may also include various tools, designed to provide users with an easy way to monitor the constantly changing state of the wiki as well as a place to discuss and resolve the many inevitable issues, namely, the inherent disagreement over wiki content. Wiki content can also be misleading, as users are bound to add incorrect information to the wiki page.

Most wikis will allow completely unrestricted access so that people are able to contribute to the site without necessarily having to undergo a process of 'registration', as had usually been required by various other types of interactive websites such as Internet forums or chat sites.

Wiki is sometimes interpreted as the backronym for "What I know is", which describes the knowledge contribution, storage and exchange function.

Pages and editing

In a traditional wiki, there are three representations for each page :

• The user-editable "source code", which is also the format stored locally on the server. It is usually plain text, made visible to the user only when the edit operation shows it in a browser form.
• A template (possibly internally generated) that defines layout and elements common to all pages.
• The rendered HTML code produced by the server on the fly from the source text when a particular page is requested.

The source format, sometimes known as "wikitext", is augmented with a simplified markup language to indicate various structural and visual conventions. The reasoning behind this design is that HTML, with its many cryptic tags, is not especially human-readable. Making typical HTML source visible makes the actual text content very hard to read and edit for most users. It is therefore better to promote plain-text editing with a few simple conventions for structure and style.

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 numbering recent edits, or a list of all the edits made within a given timeframe. Some wikis can filter the list to remove minor edits and edits made by automatic importing scripts ("bots").

Vandalism

The open philosophy of most wikis—of allowing anyone to edit content—does not ensure that editors are well intentioned. Wiki vandalism is a constant problem for wikis, although some sources with little relevant experience with wikis tend to exaggerate the danger of vandalism.