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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Wiki (disambiguation).

Editing display
showing MediaWiki markup language
A wiki (/ˈwɪki/ ⓘ WI-kee) is a form of online hypertext publication that is collaboratively
edited and managed by its own audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki
contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to
the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge
base.
Wikis are enabled by wiki software, otherwise known as wiki engines. A wiki engine, being a
form of a content management system, differs from other web-based systems such as blog
software or static site generators, in that the content is created without any defined owner or
leader, and wikis have little inherent structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the
needs of the users.[1] Wiki engines usually allow content to be written using a
simplified markup language and sometimes edited with the help of a rich-text editor.[2] There
are dozens of different wiki engines in use, both standalone and part of other software, such
as bug tracking systems. Some wiki engines are free and open-source, whereas others
are proprietary. Some permit control over different functions (levels of access); for example,
editing rights may permit changing, adding, or removing material. Others may permit access
without enforcing access control. Further rules may be imposed to organize content.
There are hundreds of thousands of wikis in use, both public and private, including wikis
functioning as knowledge management resources, note-taking tools, community websites,
and intranets. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb,
originally described wiki as "the simplest online database that could possibly work".[3] "Wiki"
(pronounced [wiki][note 1]) is a Hawaiian word meaning "quick".[4][5][6]
The online encyclopedia project Wikipedia is the most popular wiki-based website, and is
one of the most widely viewed sites in the world, having been ranked in the top twenty since
2007.[7] Wikipedia is not a single wiki but rather a collection of hundreds of wikis, with each
one pertaining to a specific language. The English-language Wikipedia has the largest
collection of articles: as of January 2024, it has over six million articles.[8]
Characteristics

Ward Cunningham
In their 2001 book The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web, Ward Cunningham and
co-author Bo Leufdescribed the essence of the Wiki concept:[9][10][page needed]

 "A wiki invites all users—not just experts—to edit any page or to create new
pages within the wiki web site, using only a standard 'plain-vanilla' Web browser
without any extra add-ons."
 "Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making
page link creation intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page
exists or not."
 "A wiki is not a carefully crafted site created by experts and professional writers
and designed for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the typical visitor/user
in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the
website landscape."
A wiki enables communities of editors and contributors to write documents collaboratively.
All that people require to contribute is a computer, Internet access, a web browser, and a
basic understanding of a simple markup language (e.g. MediaWiki markup language). A
single page in a wiki website is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire collection of
pages, which are usually well-interconnected by hyperlinks, is "the wiki". A wiki is
essentially a database for creating, browsing, and searching through information. A wiki
allows non-linear, evolving, complex, and networked text, while also allowing for editor
argument, debate, and interaction regarding the content and formatting.[11] A defining
characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated.
Generally, there is no review by a moderator or gatekeeper before modifications are accepted
and thus lead to changes on the website. Many wikis are open to alteration by the general
public without requiring registration of user accounts. Many edits can be made in real-
time and appear almost instantly online, but this feature facilitates abuse of the system.
Private wiki servers require user authentication to edit pages, and sometimes even to read
them. Maged N. Kamel Boulos, Cito Maramba, and Steve Wheeler write that the open wikis
produce a process of Social Darwinism. "... because of the openness and rapidity that wiki
pages can be edited, the pages undergo an evolutionary selection process, not unlike that
which nature subjects to living organisms. 'Unfit' sentences and sections are ruthlessly culled,
edited and replaced if they are not considered 'fit', which hopefully results in the evolution of
a higher quality and more relevant page."[12]
Editing
"Wikitext" redirects here. For the Wikipedia help page, see Help:Wikitext.
Source editing
Some wikis have an edit button or link directly on the page being viewed if the user has
permission to edit the page. This can lead to a text-based editing page where participants can
structure and format wiki pages with a simplified markup language, sometimes known as
wikitext, wiki markup or wikicode (it can also lead to a WYSIWYG editing page; see the
paragraph after the table below). For example, starting lines of text with asteriskscould create
a bulleted list. The style and syntax of wikitexts can vary greatly among wiki
implementations,[example needed] some of which also allow HTML tags.
Layout consistency
Wikis have traditionally employed plain-text editing, utilizing simpler conventions than
HTML to denote style and structure. Restricting access to HTML and Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS) within wikis hinders users from modifying content layout and formatting.
However, this restriction offers advantages. It fosters uniformity in appearance by curbing
CSS modifications and ensures that users cannot introduce JavaScript code that might impede
access for others.
Basic syntax

MediaWiki syntax Rendered output

HTML equivalent
(the source code used to add (as seen by visitors of
(web code used to add formatting to text)
formatting to text) the wiki)

"Take some more <p>"Take some more <a "Take some more tea,"
[[tea]]," the March href="/wiki/Tea" the March Hare said to
Hare said to Alice, title="Tea">tea</a>," the Alice, very earnestly.
very earnestly. March Hare said to Alice, very
earnestly.</p> "I've had nothing yet,"
"I've had Alice replied in an
'''nothing''' yet," <p>"I've had <b>nothing</b> offended tone, "so I can't
Alice replied in an yet," Alice replied in an take more."
offended tone, "so I offended tone, "so I can't
can't take more." take more."</p> "You mean you can't
take less," said the
"You mean you can't <p>"You mean you can't take Hatter. "It's very easy to
take ''less''," said <i>less</i>," said the Hatter. take more than nothing."
the Hatter. "It's very "It's very easy to take
easy to take ''more'' <i>more</i> than nothing."</p>
than nothing."

Visual editing
Wikis can also make WYSIWYG editing available to users, usually through
a JavaScript 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. An example of this is the VisualEditor on
Wikipedia. WYSIWYG controls do not, however, always provide all 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.
Version history
Some 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, such as the content accidentally being deleted or
the page has been vandalized to include offensive or malicious text or other inappropriate
content.
Edit summary
"Edit summary" redirects here. For the Wikipedia help page, see Help:Edit summary.
Many wiki implementations, such as MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia, allow
users to supply an edit summary when they edit a page. This is a short piece of text
summarizing the changes they have made (e.g. "Corrected grammar" or "Fixed formatting in
table"). It is not inserted into the article's main text 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 in a revision-control system. This enables other users to see
which changes have been made by whom and why, often in a list of summaries, dates and
other short, relevant content, a list which is called a "log" or "history".
Navigation
Within the text of most pages, there are usually many hypertext links to other pages within
the wiki. This form of non-linear navigation is more "native" to a wiki than
structured/formalized navigation schemes. Users can also create any number of index or
table-of-contents pages, with hierarchical categorization or whatever form of organization
they like. These may be challenging to maintain "by hand", as multiple authors and users may
create and delete pages in an ad hoc, unorganized manner. Wikis can provide one or more
ways to categorize or tag pages to support the maintenance of such index pages. Some wikis,
including the original, have a backlink feature, which displays all pages that link to a given
page. It is also typically possible in a wiki to create links to pages that do not yet exist, as a
way to invite others to share what they know about a subject new to the wiki. Wiki users can
typically "tag" pages with categories or keywords, to make it easier for other users to find the
article. For example, a user creating a new article on cold-weather biking might "tag" this
page under the categories of commuting, winter sports and bicycling. This would make it
easier for other users to find the article.
Linking and creating pages
Links are created using a specific syntax, the so-called "link pattern". Originally, most
wikis[citation needed] 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 easy, it also leads to links in a form
that deviates from the standard spelling. To link to a page with a single-word title, one must
abnormally capitalize one of the letters in the word (e.g. "WiKi" instead of "Wiki").
CamelCase-based wikis are instantly recognizable because they have many links with names
such as "TableOfContents" and "BeginnerQuestions". A wiki can render the visible anchor of
such links "pretty" by reinserting spaces, and possibly also reverting to lower case. This
reprocessing of the link to improve the readability of the anchor is, however, 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.
Searching
Most wikis offer at least a title search, and sometimes a full-text search. The scalability of the
search depends on whether the wiki engine uses a database. Some wikis, such as PmWiki,
use flat files.[13] MediaWiki's first versions used flat files, but it was rewritten by Lee Daniel
Crocker in the early 2000s (decade) to be a database application.[citation needed] Indexed database
access is necessary for high speed searches on large wikis. Alternatively, external search
engines such as Google Search can sometimes be used on wikis with limited searching
functions to obtain more precise results.
History
Main article: History of wikis

Wiki Wiki Shuttle at Honolulu International

Airport
WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki.[14] Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb
in Portland, Oregon, in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com on March 25,
1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International
Airport counter employee telling him to take the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" bus that runs between
the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative
substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web."[15][16]
Cunningham was, in part, inspired by the Apple HyperCard, which he had used. HyperCard,
however, was single-user.[17] Apple had designed a system allowing users to create virtual
"card stacks" supporting links among the various cards. Cunningham developed Vannevar
Bush's ideas by allowing users to "comment on and change one another's text."[2]
[18]
Cunningham says his goals were to link together people's experiences to create a new
literature to document programming patterns, and to harness people's natural desire to talk
and tell stories with a technology that would feel comfortable to those not used to
"authoring".[17]
Wikipedia became the most famous wiki site, launched in January 2001 and entering the top
ten most popular websites in 2007. In the early 2000s (decade), wikis were increasingly
adopted in enterprise as collaborative software. Common uses included project
communication, intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users. Some companies
use wikis as their only collaborative software and as a replacement for static intranets, and
some schools and universities use wikis to enhance group learning. There may be greater use
of wikis behind firewalls than on the public Internet. On March 15, 2007, the word wiki was
listed in the online Oxford English Dictionary.[19]
Alternative definitions
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the word "wiki" was used to refer to both user-editable
websites and the software that powers them; the latter definition is still occasionally in use.
[1]
Wiki inventor Ward Cunningham wrote in 2014[20] that the word "wiki" should not be used
to refer to a single website, but rather to a mass of user-editable pages or sites so that a single
website is not "a wiki" but "an instance of wiki". He wrote that the concept of wiki
federation, in which the same content can be hosted and edited in more than one location in a
manner similar to distributed version control, meant that the concept of a single discrete
"wiki" no longer made sense.[21]
Implementations
See also: List of wiki software
Wiki software is a type of collaborative software that runs a wiki system, allowing web pages
to be created and edited using a common web browser. It may be implemented as a series
of scripts behind an existing web server or as a standalone application server that runs on one
or more web servers. The content is stored in a file system, and changes to the content are
stored in a relational database management system. A commonly implemented software
package is MediaWiki, which runs Wikipedia. Alternatively, personal wikis run as a
standalone application on a single computer.
Wikis can also be created on a "wiki farm", where the server-side software is implemented by
the wiki farm owner. Some wiki farms can also make private, password-protected wikis. Free
wiki farms generally contain advertising on every page. For more information,
see Comparison of wiki hosting services.
Trust and security
Controlling changes
"Recent changes" redirects here. For the Wikipedia help page, see Help:Recent changes. For
the recent changes page itself, see Special:RecentChanges.

History comparison reports highlight the

changes between two revisions of a page.
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 showing recent edits, or a
list of edits made within a given time frame.[22] Some wikis can filter the list to remove minor
edits and edits made by automatic importing scripts ("bots").[23] From the change log, other
functions are accessible in most wikis: the revision history shows previous page versions and
the diff feature highlights the changes between two revisions. Using the revision history, an
editor can view and restore a previous version of the article. This gives great power to the
author to eliminate edits. The diff feature can be used to decide whether or not this is
necessary. A regular wiki user can view the diff of an edit listed on the "Recent Changes"
page and, if it is an unacceptable edit, consult the history, restoring a previous revision; this
process is more or less streamlined, depending on the wiki software used.[24]
In case unacceptable edits are missed on the "recent changes" page, some wiki engines
provide additional content control. It can be monitored to ensure that a page, or a set of pages,
keeps its quality. A person willing to maintain pages will be warned of modifications to the
pages, allowing them to verify the validity of new editions quickly. This can be seen as a very
pro-author and anti-editor feature.[25] A watchlist is a common implementation of this. Some
wikis also implement "patrolled revisions", in which editors with the requisite credentials can
mark some edits as not vandalism. A "flagged revisions" system can prevent edits from going
live until they have been reviewed.[26]
Trustworthiness and reliability of content
Critics of publicly editable wiki systems argue that these systems could be easily tampered
with by malicious individuals ("vandals") or even by well-meaning but unskilled users who
introduce errors into the content, while proponents maintain that the community of users can
catch such malicious or erroneous content and correct it.[2] Lars Aronsson, a data
systems specialist, summarizes the controversy as follows: "Most people when they first learn
about the wiki concept, assume that a Web site that can be edited by anybody would soon be
rendered useless by destructive input. It sounds like offering free spray cans next to a grey
concrete wall. The only likely outcome would be ugly graffiti and simple tagging and many
artistic efforts would not be long lived. Still, it seems to work very well."[14] High editorial
standards in medicine and health sciences articles, in which users typically use peer-reviewed
journals or university textbooks as sources, have led to the idea of expert-moderated wikis.
[27]
Some wikis allow one to link to specific versions of articles, which has been useful to the
scientific community, in that expert peer reviewers could analyse articles, improve them and
provide links to the trusted version of that article.[28] Noveck points out that "participants are
accredited by members of the wiki community, who have a vested interest in preserving the
quality of the work product, on the basis of their ongoing participation." On controversial
topics that have been subject to disruptive editing, a wiki author may restrict editing to
registered users.[29]
Security
"Edit war" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Edit conflict. For Wikipedia's policy
on edit warring, see Wikipedia:Edit warring.
The open philosophy of wiki – allowing anyone to edit content – does not ensure that every
editor's intentions are well-mannered. For example, vandalism (changing wiki content to
something offensive, adding nonsense, maliciously removing content, or deliberately adding
incorrect information, such as hoax information) can be a major problem. On larger wiki
sites, such as those run by the Wikimedia Foundation, vandalism can go unnoticed for some
period of time. Wikis, because of their open nature, are susceptible to intentional disruption,
known as "trolling". Wikis tend to take a soft-security approach to the problem of vandalism,
making damage easy to undo rather than attempting to prevent damage. Larger wikis often
employ sophisticated methods, such as bots that automatically identify and revert vandalism
and JavaScript enhancements that show characters that have been added in each edit. In this
way, vandalism can be limited to just "minor vandalism" or "sneaky vandalism", where the
characters added/eliminated are so few that bots do not identify them and users do not pay
much attention to them.[30][unreliable source] An example of a bot that reverts vandalism on Wikipedia is
ClueBot NG. ClueBot NG, which uses machine learning to identify likely vandalism, can
revert edits, often within minutes, if not seconds.[31]
The amount of vandalism a wiki receives depends on how open the wiki is. For instance,
some wikis allow unregistered users, identified by their IP addresses, to edit content, while
others limit this function to just registered users.[32]
Edit wars can also occur as users repetitively revert a page to the version they favor. In some
cases, editors with opposing views of which content should appear or what formatting style
should be used will change and re-change each other's edits. This results in the page being
"unstable" from a general user's perspective, because each time a general user comes to the
page, it may look different. Some wiki software allows an administrator to stop such edit
wars by locking a page from further editing until a decision has been made on what version
of the page would be most appropriate.[11] Some wikis are in a better position than others to
control behavior due to governance structures existing outside the wiki. For instance, a
college teacher can create incentives for students to behave themselves on a class wiki they
administer by limiting editing to logged-in users and pointing out that all contributions can be
traced back to the contributors. Bad behavior can then be dealt with under university policies.
[13]

Potential malware vector

Malware can also be a problem for wikis, as users can add links to sites hosting malicious
code. For example, a German Wikipedia article about the Blaster Worm was edited to include
a hyperlink to a malicious website. Users of vulnerable Microsoft Windows systems who
followed the link would be infected.[11] A countermeasure is the use of software that prevents
users from saving an edit that contains a link to a site listed on a blacklist of malicious sites.
Communities
Applications

The home page of the English Wikipedia

The English Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis on the World Wide Web[33] and
ranks in the top 10 among all Web sites in terms of traffic.[34] Other large wikis include
the WikiWikiWeb, Memory Alpha, Wikivoyage, and previously Susning.nu, a Swedish-
language knowledge base. Medical and health-related wiki examples include Ganfyd, an
online collaborative medical reference that is edited by medical professionals and invited
non-medical experts.[12] Many wiki communities are private, particularly within enterprises.
They are often used as internal documentation for in-house systems and applications. Some
companies use wikis to allow customers to help produce software documentation.[35] A study
of corporate wiki users found that they could be divided into "synthesizers" and "adders" of
content. Synthesizers' frequency of contribution was affected more by their impact on other
wiki users, while adders' contribution frequency was affected more by being able to
accomplish their immediate work.[36] From a study of thousands of wiki deployments,
Jonathan Grudin concluded careful stakeholder analysis and education are crucial to
successful wiki deployment.[37]
In 2005, the Gartner Group, noting the increasing popularity of wikis, estimated that they
would become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50% of companies by 2009.[38][needs
update]
Wikis can be used for project management.[39][40][unreliable source] Wikis have also been used in the
academic community for sharing and dissemination of information across institutional and
international boundaries.[41] In those settings, they have been found useful for collaboration
on grant writing, strategic planning, departmental documentation, and committee work.[42] In
the mid-2000s, the increasing trend among industries toward collaboration placed a heavier
impetus upon educators to make students proficient in collaborative work, inspiring even
greater interest in wikis being used in the classroom.[11]
Wikis have found some use within the legal profession and within the government. Examples
include the Central Intelligence Agency's Intellipedia, designed to share and
collect intelligence, DKospedia, which was used by the American Civil Liberties Union to
assist with review of documents about the internment of detainees in Guantánamo Bay;[43] and
the wiki of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, used to post court
rules and allow practitioners to comment and ask questions. The United States Patent and
Trademark Office operates Peer-to-Patent, a wiki to allow the public to collaborate on
finding prior art relevant to the examination of pending patent applications. Queens, New
York has used a wiki to allow citizens to collaborate on the design and planning of a local
park. Cornell Law School founded a wiki-based legal dictionary called Wex, whose growth
has been hampered by restrictions on who can edit.[29]
In academic contexts, wikis have also been used as project collaboration and research support
systems.[44][45]
City wikis
A city wiki (or local wiki) is a wiki used as a knowledge base and social network for a
specific geographical locale.[46][47][48] The term 'city wiki' or its foreign language equivalent (e.g.
German 'Stadtwiki') is sometimes also used for wikis that cover not just a city, but a small
town or an entire region. A city wiki contains information about specific instances of things,
ideas, people and places. Much of this information might not be appropriate
for encyclopedias such as Wikipedia (e.g. articles on every retail outlet in a town), but might
be appropriate for a wiki with more localized content and viewers. A city wiki could also
contain information about the following subjects, that may or may not be appropriate for a
general knowledge wiki, such as:

 Details of public establishments such as public houses, bars, accommodation or

social centers
 Owner name, opening hours and statistics for a specific shop
 Statistical information about a specific road in a city
 Flavors of ice cream served at a local ice cream parlor
 A biography of a local mayor and other persons
WikiNodes
"WikiNode" redirects here. For the app for the Apple iPad, see WikiNodes.
Visualization of the collaborative work in the German wiki project Mathe für Nicht-Freaks
WikiNodes are pages on wikis that describe related wikis. They are usually organized as
neighbors and delegates. A neighbor wiki is simply a wiki that may discuss similar content or
may otherwise be of interest. A delegate wiki is a wiki that agrees to have certain content
delegated to that wiki.[49] One way of finding a wiki on a specific subject is to follow the wiki-
node network from wiki to wiki.
Participants
The four basic types of users who participate in wikis are reader, author, wiki administrator
and system administrator. The system administrator is responsible for the installation and
maintenance of the wiki engine and the container web server. The wiki administrator
maintains wiki content and is provided additional functions about pages (e.g. page protection
and deletion), and can adjust users' access rights by, for instance, blocking them from editing.
[50]

Growth factors
A study of several hundred wikis showed that a relatively high number of administrators for a
given content size is likely to reduce growth;[51] that access controls restricting editing to
registered users tends to reduce growth; that a lack of such access controls tends to fuel new
user registration; and that higher administration ratios (i.e. admins/user) have no significant
effect on content or population growth.[52]
Conferences
Active conferences and meetings about wiki-related topics include:

 Atlassian Summit, an annual conference for users of Atlassian software,

including Confluence.[53]
 OpenSym (called WikiSym until 2014), an academic conference dedicated to
research about wikis and open collaboration.
 SMWCon, a bi-annual conference for users and developers of Semantic
MediaWiki.[54]
 TikiFest, a frequently held meeting for users and developers of Tiki Wiki CMS
Groupware.[55]
 Wikimania, an annual conference dedicated to the research and practice
of Wikimedia Foundation projects like Wikipedia.
Former wiki-related events include:

 RecentChangesCamp (2006–2012), an unconference on wiki-related topics.

 RegioWikiCamp (2009–2013), a semi-annual unconference on "regiowikis", or
wikis on cities and other geographic areas.[56]
Legal environment
Joint authorship of articles, in which different users participate in correcting, editing, and
compiling the finished product, can also cause editors to become tenants in common of the
copyright, making it impossible to republish without permission of all co-owners, some of
whose identities may be unknown due to pseudonymous or anonymous editing.[11] Where
persons contribute to a collective work such as an encyclopedia, there is, however, no joint
ownership if the contributions are separate and distinguishable.[57] Despite most wikis' tracking
of individual contributions, the action of contributing to a wiki page is still arguably one of
jointly correcting, editing, or compiling, which would give rise to joint ownership. Some
copyright issues can be alleviated through the use of an open content license. Version 2 of
the GNU Free Documentation License includes a specific provision for wiki
relicensing; Creative Commons licenses are also popular. When no license is specified, an
implied license to read and add content to a wiki may be deemed to exist on the grounds of
business necessity and the inherent nature of a wiki, although the legal basis for such an
implied license may not exist in all circumstances.[citation needed]
Wikis and their users can be held liable for certain activities that occur on the wiki. If a wiki
owner displays indifference and forgoes controls (such as banning copyright infringers) that
they could have exercised to stop copyright infringement, they may be deemed to have
authorized infringement, especially if the wiki is primarily used to infringe copyrights or
obtains a direct financial benefit, such as advertising revenue, from infringing activities. [11] In
the United States, wikis may benefit from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,
which protects sites that engage in "Good Samaritan" policing of harmful material, with no
requirement on the quality or quantity of such self-policing.[58] It has also been argued,
however, that a wiki's enforcement of certain rules, such as anti-bias, verifiability, reliable
sourcing, and no-original-research policies, could pose legal risks.[59] When defamation occurs
on a wiki, theoretically, all users of the wiki can be held liable, because any of them had the
ability to remove or amend the defamatory material from the "publication". It remains to be
seen whether wikis will be regarded as more akin to an internet service provider, which is
generally not held liable due to its lack of control over publications' contents, than a
publisher.[11] It has been recommended that trademark owners monitor what information is
presented about their trademarks on wikis, since courts may use such content as evidence
pertaining to public perceptions. Joshua Jarvis notes, "Once misinformation is identified, the
trademark owner can simply edit the entry".[60]
See also

 Internet portal

 Comparison of wiki software

 Content management system
 CURIE
 Dispersed knowledge
 List of wikis
 Mass collaboration
 Universal Edit Button
 Wikis and education
Notes
1. The realization of the Hawaiian /w/ phoneme varies between [w] and [v], and the realization of
the /k/ phoneme varies between [k] and [t], among other realizations. Thus, the pronunciation of
the Hawaiian word wiki varies between ['wiki], ['witi], ['viki], and ['viti]. See Hawaiian
phonology for more details.
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Sources
 Ebersbach, Anja (2008), Wiki: Web Collaboration, Springer Science+Business
Media, ISBN 978-3-540-35150-4
Further reading
 Mader, Stewart (December 10, 2007), Wikipatterns, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-0-470-22362-8
 Tapscott, Don (April 17, 2008), Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Portfolio
Hardcover, ISBN 978-1-59184-193-7

External links
Wikiat Wikipedia's sister projects

 Definitions from Wiktionary

 Media from Commons

 News from Wikinews

 Resources from Wikiversity

 Data from Wikidata

 Documentation from MediaWiki

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 Wiki at Curlie
 Exploring with Wiki, an interview with Ward Cunningham by Bill Verners
 Murphy, Paula (April 2006). Topsy-turvy World of Wiki. University of
California.
 Ward Cunningham's correspondence with etymologists
 WikiIndex and WikiApiary, directories of wikis
 WikiMatrix, a website for comparing wiki software and hosts
 wikiteam on GitHub
v

e
Wikis

 Personal

Types  Medical

 Semantic

onents  Software

 List of LocalWikis

 Wikis

Lists  Software

 List of Wikipedias

 List of Wiktionaries

 Software
arisons
 Wiki farms

e wikis  Ballotpedia

 Biographicon

 Book Drum

 Chalo Chatu

 Conservapedia

 DavisWiki

 Diplopedia

 Encyclopedia Dramatica

 Engineering and Technology History Wiki

 Family History Research Wiki

 Gene Wiki

 Geo-Wiki
  Giant Bomb

 Gynopedia

 The Hidden Wiki

 Intellipedia

 LocalWiki

 Namuwiki

 Open protein structure annotation network

 RationalWiki

 Resistance Manual

 Rigveda Wiki

 Sky-Map.org

 The Cutting Room Floor

 TV Tropes

 Uncyclopedia

 WikiArt

 WikiFactor

 Wikifonia

 wikiHow

 Wikiloc

 Wikimania

 Wikipedia

 WikiProfessional

 Wikiprogress

 Wikirating

 WikiStage

 Wikistrat

 WikiTribune

 Wowpedia

 Confluence

 Fandom
farms
 PBworks

 Wetpaint

 Wikis and education

 History
ee also
 Creole

 .wiki

v
t

e
Wiki software

e
Computer-mediated communication

e
Sharing economy

Authority control databases

Categories:
 Wikis
 Hawaiian words and phrases
 Hypertext
 Self-organization
 Social information processing
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