What Is Wiki?
Wiki is in Ward's original description:
The simplest online database that could possibly work.
Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.
Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.
Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users.
Wiki History
This began on March 25, 1995. A little later (May 1, 1995), an InvitationToThePatternsList caused an increase in participation. Growth has continued since then, to the point where the average number of new pages ranges between 5 and 12 per day.
This is the first ever wiki site, founded as an automated supplement to the PortlandPatternRepository. The site was immediately popular within the pattern community, largely due to the newness of the Internet and a good slate of InvitedAuthors. The site was, and remains, dedicated to PeopleProjectsAndPatterns.
I created the site and the WikiWikiWeb machinery that operates it. I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for quick and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web. Read more about etymology here:http://c2.com/doc/etymology.html. An early page, WikiWikiHyperCard, traces wiki ideas back to a HyperCard stack I wrote in the late 80's. This same stack, by the way, spawned CrcCards. I've reconstructed theWikiDesignPrinciples I applied at the time. Read more on the name here: http://c2.com/doc/etymology.html.
PatrickMueller wrote probably the first WikiWikiClone, choosing the RexxLanguage as a convenient vehicle for a night's work. I soon wrote a version of wiki that could host its own source code and announcedWikiWikiGoesPublic. Rather than fold changes back into my editable version, implementers chose to distribute their modifications on their own sites and boast of the many features they had added, accepting raw HTML being the most common one.
It has been claimed by some that the ideas that led to the Wiki concept have their origins (see: WikiWikiOrigin) in the ZOG database system effort, first materialized at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1972.
Editing wiki pages
There are many different ways in which wikis have users edit the content. Ordinarily, the structure and formatting of wiki pages are specified with a simplified markup language, sometimes known aswikitext (for example, starting a line of text with an asterisk often sets up a bulleted list). The style and syntax of wikitexts can vary greatly among wiki implementations, some of which also allow HTMLtags. Designers of wikis often take this approach because HTML, with its many cryptic tags, is not very legible, making it hard to edit. Wikis therefore favour 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 access for other users.
MediaWiki syntax | Equivalent HTML | Rendered output |
"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> | "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." |
Increasingly, wikis are making WYSIWYG editing available to users, usually by means of JavaScript or an ActiveX 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. However, WYSIWYG controls do not always provide all of 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.
Most 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 or the page has been vandalized. Many implementations, like MediaWiki, allow users to supply an edit summary when they edit a page; this is a short piece of text summarising the changes. It is not inserted into the article, 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 to a revision-control system.
Linking and creating pages
Links are created using a specific syntax, the so-called "link pattern" (also see CURIE). Originally, most wikis 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 very easy, it also leads to links which are written in a form that deviates from the standard spelling. CamelCase-based wikis are instantly recognizable because they have many links with names such as "TableOfContents" and "BeginnerQuestions." It is possible for a wiki to render the visible anchor for such links "pretty" by reinserting spaces, and possibly also reverting to lower case. However, this reprocessing of the link to improve the readability of the anchor is 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.
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