What is a Wiki?

What is a Wiki? Tutorial 1 for new WikiEducators 2 All content sourced from WikiEducator.org and is licensed under CC-BY-SA or CC-BY where specified. Objectives In this tutorial we will: • provide an overview of what wikis are, • and show some examples of their different uses. • discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using wikis to develop content • describe the main features of WikiEducator What is a Wiki? Wiki wiki sign outside Honolulu International Airport. (Image courtesy of A. Barataz) The name "Wiki" was chosen by Ward Cunningham-the creator of the first Wiki. It is a shortened form of "wiki-wiki", the Hawaiian word for quick. A wiki is a web site that is generally editable by anyone with a computer, a web browser, and an internet connection. Wikis use a quick and easy syntax to allow users to apply formatting to text and create links between pages. This simple formatting syntax means that authors no longer need to learn the complexities of HTML to create content on the web. The main strength of a wiki is that it gives people the ability to work collaboratively on the same document. The only software you need is an Internet browser. Consequently, wikis are used for a variety of purposes. If you make a mistake, it's easy to revert back to an earlier version of the document. The largest and most talked about Wiki on the Internet is Wikipedia [1] Wikipedia is, for the most part, editable by anyone in the world with a computer and an internet connection and, at the time of this writing, contained over 1,500,000 pages. One and a half million pages in English! There are also more than 250,000 articles in German, nearing 2 million articles or pages! While Wikipedia's mission is to create an encyclopedic resource of knowledge, wikis can be used for a variety of purposes and are quickly becoming the defacto technology for collaborative group work online. They can be great social tools for classrooms, teams, community groups, or can even be configured to provide easily updatable web sites for organisations. The following wikis display a range of different applications of wiki technology: • Wikitravel [2]-a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide. • WikiWikiWeb [3]-the first ever wiki, it has been around since 1995. • eXe Project [4]-an example of how a wiki can be used to …