Navigation

Traditionally, wikis offer free navigation between their pages via hypertext links in
page text, rather than requiring users to follow a formal or structured navigation
scheme. Users may also create indexes or table of contents pages, hierarchical
categorization via a taxonomy, or other forms of ad hoc content organization. Wiki
implementations can provide one or more ways to categorize or tag pages to support
the maintenance of such index pages, such as a backlink feature which displays all
pages that link to a given page. Adding categories or tags to a page makes it easier
for other users to find it.

Most wikis allow the titles of pages to be searched amongst, and some offer full text
search of all stored content.

Navigation between wikis

Visualization of the collaborative work

Some wiki communities have established navigational networks between each other
using a system called WikiNodes. A WikiNode is a page on a wiki which describes and
links to other, related wikis. Some wikis operate a structure of neighbors and
delegates, wherein a neighbor wiki is one which discusses similar content or is
otherwise of interest, and a delegate wiki is one which has agreed to have certain
content delegated to it.[14] WikiNode networks act as webrings which may be
navigated from one node to another to find a wiki which addresses a specific subject.
Linking to and naming pages
The syntax used to create internal hyperlinks varies between wiki implementations.
Beginning with the WikiWikiWeb in 1995, most wikis used camel case to name
pages,[15] which is when words in a phrase are capitalized and the spaces between
them removed. In this system, the phrase "camel case" would be rendered as
"CamelCase". In early wiki engines, when a page was displayed, any instance of a
camel case phrase would be transformed into a link to another page named with the
same phrase.

While this system made it easy to link to pages, it had the downside of requiring
pages to be named in a form deviating from standard spelling, and titles of a single
word required abnormally capitalizing one of the letters (e.g. "WiKi" instead of "Wiki").
Some wiki implementations attempt to improve the display of camel case page titles
and links by reinserting spaces and possibly also reverting to lower case, but this
simplistic method is not able to correctly present titles of mixed capitalization. For
example, "Kingdom of France" as a page title would be written as "KingdomOfFrance",
and displayed as "Kingdom Of France".

To avoid this problem, the syntax of wiki markup gained free links, wherein a term in
natural language could be wrapped in special characters to turn it into a link without
modifying it. The concept was given the name in its first implementation, in
UseModWiki in February 2001.[16] In that implementation, link terms were wrapped in
a double set of square brackets, for example [[Kingdom of France]]. This
syntax was adopted by a number of later wiki engines.

It is typically possible for users of a wiki to create links to pages that do not yet exist,
as a way to invite the creation of those pages. Such links are usually differentiated
visually in some fashion, such as being colored red instead of the default blue, which
was the case in the original WikiWikiWeb, or by appearing as a question mark next to
the linked words.

History
 Wiki Wiki Shuttle at Honolulu
International Airport

WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki.[17] Ward Cunningham started developing it in 1994,
and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995. Cunningham gave
it the name after remembering a Honolulu International Airport counter employee
telling him to take the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" bus that runs between the airport's
terminals, later observing that "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick'
and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web."[18][19]

Cunningham's system was inspired by his having used Apple's hypertext software
HyperCard, which allowed users to create interlinked "stacks" of virtual cards.[20]
HyperCard, however, was single-user, and Cunningham was inspired to build upon the
ideas of Vannevar Bush, the inventor of hypertext, by allowing users to "comment on
and change one another's text."[2][21] 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".[20]

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, 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 collaborative software and as a replacement for static
intranets, and some schools and universities use wikis to enhance group learning. On
March 15, 2007, the word wiki was listed in the online Oxford English Dictionary.[22]

Alternative definitions