History: Wiki

The Wiki is a collaboration environment where the users can edit the pages they read. Links to wikipages are created automatically using capitalized words smashed together. A special editing syntax is used to provide features such as bold text, images, external links etc. A history is kept for each page so admins can view diffs and rollback a page to a previous version if a user breaks a page. Wikis can be used for documentation, support, intranets, and many other uses. The Tiki Wiki system has all the normal features Wikis have plus a lot more.

Copied Source: What is Wiki

Wiki 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 ext 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.

Historical Note: The first ever wiki site was created for the Portland Pattern Repository in 1995. That site now hosts tens of thousands of pages.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiHistory
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples

NOTE

All of the pages listed above can and do provide much better information, background and sources about Wiki than I can. I personally found the page about Wiki History and Wiki Design Principlesfilled with the type of information that I like and found very interesting. If you see information about Wikis here then you can pretty well bet that this is where I found it and in some cases borrowed to use here. If you see pages here called the same things then you can be certain that we took our cue from them about the need and use fro them. These other sites have been doing Wiki a long time and obviously know and understand what they are doing, imatating them is a course that makes good sense to me. AlBrown 08/07/03