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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the concept. For its use as a nickname, see Wikipedia. For
other uses, see Wiki (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Wiiki or WIKY.
refer to caption
Editing display showing MediaWiki markup language
A wiki (/'w?ki/ ? WICK-ee) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which
is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web
browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the
public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal
knowledge base.

A photo of the MediaWiki homepage, a wiki software

Wikis are powered by wiki software, also known as wiki engines. Being a form of
content management system, these differ 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. Wikis have little inherent structure, allowing one to
emerge according to the needs of the users.[1] Wiki engines usually allow content
to be written using a lightweight 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. In
addition to hosting user-authored content, wikis allow those users to interact,
hold discussions, and collaborate.[3]
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".[4] "Wiki" (pronounced [wiki][note 1]) is a Hawaiian word meaning
"quick".[5][6][7]

The online encyclopedia project Wikipedia is the most popular wiki-based website,
as well being one of the internet's most popular websites, having been ranked
consistently as such since at least 2007.[8] 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,
standing at 6,943,069 as of January 2025.[9]

Characteristics

Ward Cunningham
In their 2001 book The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web, Cunningham and co-
author Bo Leuf described the essence of the wiki concept:[10][11]

"A wiki invites all users�not just experts�to edit any page or to create new pages
within the wiki website, 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."
Editing
"Wikitext" redirects here. For the Wikipedia help page, see Help:Wikitext.
Source editing
Some wikis will present users with an edit button or link directly on the page
being viewed. This will open an interface for writing, formatting, and structuring
page content. The interface may be a source editor, which is text-based and employs
a lightweight markup language (also known as wikitext, wiki markup, or wikicode),
or a visual editor. For example, in a source editor, starting lines of text with
asterisks could create a bulleted list.

The syntax and features of wiki markup languages for denoting style and structure
can vary greatly among implementations. Some allow the use of HTMLTooltip Hypertext
Markup Language and CSSTooltip Cascading Style Sheets,[12] while others prevent the
use of these to foster uniformity in appearance.

Example of syntax
A short section of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland rendered in wiki markup:

Wiki markup Equivalent in HTML Output shown to readers

"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."
"Take some more <a href="/wiki/Tea" title="Tea">tea</a>," the March Hare said to
Alice, very earnestly.
<p>"I've had <strong>nothing</strong> yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so
I can't take more."

<p>"You mean you can't take <em>less</em>," said the Hatter. "It's very easy to
take <em>more</em> than nothing."

"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."

Visual editing
While wiki engines have traditionally offered source editing to users, in recent
years some implementations have added a rich text editing mode. This is usually
implemented, using JavaScript, as an interface which translates formatting
instructions chosen from a toolbar into the corresponding wiki markup or HTML. This
is generated and submitted to the server transparently, shielding users from the
technical detail of markup editing and making it easier for them to change the
content of pages. An example of such an interface is the VisualEditor in MediaWiki,
the wiki engine used by Wikipedia. WYSIWYG editors may not provide all the features
available in wiki markup, and some users prefer not to use them, so a source editor
will often be available simultaneously.

Version history
Some wiki implementations keep a record of changes made to wiki pages, and may
store every version of the page permanently. This allows authors to revert a page
to an older version to rectify a mistake, or counteract a malicious or
inappropriate edit to its content.[13]

These stores are typically presented for each page in a list, called a "log" or
"edit history", available from the page via a link in the interface. The list
displays metadata for each revision to the page, such as the time and date of when
it was stored, and the name of the person who created it, alongside a link to view
that specific revision. A diff (short for "difference") feature may be available,
which highlights the changes between any two revisions.

Edit summaries
"Edit summary" redirects here. For the Wikipedia help page, see Help:Edit summary.
The edit history view in many wiki implementations will include edit summaries
written by users when submitting changes to a page. Similar to the function of a
log message in a revision control system, an edit summary is a short piece of text
which summarizes and perhaps explains the change, for example "Corrected grammar"
or "Fixed table formatting to not extend past page width". It is not inserted into
the article's main text.

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 in the German wiki project Mathe f�r Nicht-
Freaks
"WikiNode" redirects here. For the app for the Apple iPad, see WikiNodes.
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
Main article: History of wikis

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 no