3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

Wiki

A wiki (/ˈwɪki/ ⓘ
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.

Wikis are powered by wiki software, also known

as wiki engines. Being a form of content
management system, these differ from other Editing display showing MediaWiki markup language
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
A photo of the MediaWiki
software, such as bug tracking systems. Some wiki engines are
homepage, a wiki software
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 6,967,601 as of March 2025.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 1/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

Characteristics
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, Ward Cunningham
it seeks to involve the typical visitor/user in an ongoing
process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes
the website landscape."

Editing

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 HTML and CSS,[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:

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 2/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

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
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

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 Visualization of the collaborative
delegated to it.[14] WikiNode networks act as webrings which work in the German wiki project
may be navigated from one node to another to find a wiki which Mathe für Nicht-Freaks
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 3/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

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
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]
Wiki Wiki Shuttle at Honolulu
Cunningham's system was inspired by his having used Apple's
International Airport
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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 4/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

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
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, and the latter definition is still occasionally in use.[1]

By 2014, Ward Cunningham's thinking on the nature of wikis had evolved, leading him to write[23]
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". In this
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, the idea of a single discrete "wiki" no
longer made sense.[24]

Implementations
The software which powers a wiki may be implemented as a series of scripts which operate an
existing web server, a standalone application server that runs on one or more web servers, or in the
case of personal wikis, run as a standalone application on a single computer. Some wikis use flat
file databases to store page content, while others use a relational database,[25] as indexed database
access is faster on large wikis, particularly for searching.

Hosting
Wikis can also be created on wiki hosting services (also known as wiki farms), where the server-
side software is implemented by the wiki farm owner, and may do so at no charge in exchange for
advertisements being displayed on the wiki's pages. Some hosting services offer private, password-
protected wikis requiring authentication to access. Free wiki farms generally contain advertising on
every page.

Trust and security

Access control
The four basic types of users who participate in wikis are readers, authors, wiki administrators and
system administrators. System administrators are responsible for the installation and maintenance
of the wiki engine and the container web server. Wiki administrators maintain content and,
through having elevated privileges, are granted additional functions (including, for example,
preventing edits to pages, deleting pages, changing users' access rights, or blocking them from
editing).[26]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 5/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

Controlling changes
Wikis are generally designed with a soft security philosophy in
which it is easy to correct mistakes or harmful changes, rather
than attempting to prevent them from happening in the first
place. This allows them to be very open while providing a
means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of
pages. Most wikis offer a recent changes page which shows
recent edits, or a list of edits made within a given time
frame.[27] Some wikis can filter the list to remove edits flagged History comparison reports highlight
the changes between two revisions
by users as "minor" and automated edits.[28] The version
of a page.
history feature allows harmful changes to be reverted quickly
and easily.[13]

Some wiki engines provide additional content control, allowing remote monitoring and
management of a page or set of pages to maintain quality. A person willing to maintain pages will
be alerted of modifications to them, allowing them to verify the validity of new editions quickly.[29]
Such a feature is often called a watchlist.

Some wikis also implement patrolled revisions, in which editors with the requisite credentials can
mark edits as being legitimate. A flagged revisions system can prevent edits from going live until
they have been reviewed.[30]

Wikis may allow any person on the web to edit their content without having to register an account
on the site first (anonymous editing), or require registration as a condition of participation.[31] On
implementations where an administrator is able to restrict editing of a page or group of pages to a
specific group of users, they may have the option to prevent anonymous editing while allowing it
for registered users.[32]

Trustworthiness and reliability of content

Critics of publicly editable wikis argue that they could be easily tampered with by malicious
individuals, or even by well-meaning but unskilled users who introduce errors into the content.
Proponents maintain that these issues will be caught and rectified by a wiki's community of
users.[2][17] 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.[33] Wiki implementations retaining and allowing access to specific
versions of articles has been useful to the scientific community, by allowing expert peer reviewers
to provide links to trusted version of articles which they have analyzed.[34]

Security
Trolling and cybervandalism on wikis, where content is changed to something deliberately
incorrect or a hoax, offensive material or nonsense is added, or content is maliciously removed, can
be a major problem. On larger wiki sites it is possible for such changes to go unnoticed for a long
period.

In addition to using the approach of soft security for protecting themselves, larger wikis may
employ sophisticated methods, such as bots that automatically identify and revert vandalism. For
example, on Wikipedia, the bot ClueBot NG uses machine learning to identify likely harmful

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 6/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

changes, and reverts these changes within minutes or even seconds.[35]

Disagreements between users over the content or appearance of pages may cause edit wars, where
competing users repetitively change a page back to a version that they favor. Some wiki software
allows administrators to prevent pages from being editable until a decision has been made on what
version of the page would be most appropriate.[3]

Some wikis may be subject to external structures of governance which address the behavior of
persons with access to the system, for example in academic contexts.[25]

Harmful external links

As most wikis allow the creation of hyperlinks to other sites and services, the addition of malicious
hyperlinks, such as sites infected with malware, can also be a problem. For example, in 2006 a
German Wikipedia article about the Blaster Worm was edited to include a hyperlink to a malicious
website, and users of vulnerable Microsoft Windows systems who followed the link had their
systems infected with the worm.[3] Some wiki engines offer a blacklist feature which prevents users
from adding hyperlinks to specific sites that have been placed on the list by the wiki's
administrators.

Communities

Applications
The English Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis
on the World Wide Web[36] and ranks in the top 10 among all
Web sites in terms of traffic.[37] 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.[38] Many wiki
communities are private, particularly within enterprises. They The home page of the English
are often used as internal documentation for in-house systems Wikipedia
and applications. Some companies use wikis to allow customers
to help produce software documentation.[39] 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.[40] From a study of thousands of wiki deployments, Jonathan Grudin concluded
careful stakeholder analysis and education are crucial to successful wiki deployment.[41]

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.[42] Wikis can be
used for project management.[43][44] Wikis have also been used in the academic community for
sharing and dissemination of information across institutional and international boundaries.[45] In
those settings, they have been found useful for collaboration on grant writing, strategic planning,
departmental documentation, and committee work.[46] In the mid-2000s, the increasing trend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 7/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

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.[3]

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
assessments, DKosopedia, which was used by the American Civil Liberties Union to assist with
review of documents about the internment of detainees in Guantánamo Bay;[47] 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.[32]

In academic contexts, wikis have also been used as project collaboration and research support
systems.[48][49]

City wikis
A city wiki or local wiki is a wiki used as a knowledge base and social network for a specific
geographical locale.[50][51][52] The term city wiki is sometimes also used for wikis that cover not
just a city, but a small town or an entire region. Such a wiki contains information about specific
instances of things, ideas, people and places. Such highly localized information might be
appropriate for a wiki targeted at local viewers, and could include:

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

Growth factors
A study of several hundred wikis in 2008 showed that a relatively high number of administrators
for a given content size is likely to reduce growth;[53] access controls restricting editing to
registered users tends to reduce growth; a lack of such access controls tends to fuel new user
registration; and that a higher ratio of administrators to regular users has no significant effect on
content or population growth.[54]

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.[3] 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, and Creative Commons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 8/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

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.

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.[3] 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.[55] It has also been argued that a wiki's enforcement of certain rules,
such as anti-bias, verifiability, reliable sourcing, and no-original-research policies, could pose legal
risks.[56] 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.[3] 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, and they can edit entries to rectify misinformation.[57]

Conferences
Active conferences and meetings about wiki-related topics include:

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

Confluence.[58]
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.[59]
TikiFest, a frequently held meeting for users and developers of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware.[60]
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.[61]

See also

Internet portal

Comparison of wiki software

Content management system
CURIE
Dispersed knowledge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 9/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

Fork and pull model – a common alternate paradigm

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.

References
1. Mitchell, Scott (July 2008), Easy Wiki Hosting, Scott Hanselman's blog, and Snagging Screens
(https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc700339.aspx), MSDN Magazine, archived (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20100316192702/https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc7003
39.aspx) from the original on March 16, 2010, retrieved March 9, 2010
2. "wiki" (https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192819/wiki), Encyclopædia Britannica,
vol. 1, London: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2007, archived (https://web.archive.org/web/200
80424074513/https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192819/wiki) from the original on
April 24, 2008, retrieved April 10, 2008
3. Black, Peter; Delaney, Hayden; Fitzgerald, Brian (2007), Legal Issues for Wikis: The Challenge
of User-generated and Peer-produced Knowledge, Content and Culture (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20121222125337/https://elaw.murdoch.edu.au/archives/issues/2007/1/eLaw_legal%20is
sues%20for%20wikis.pdf) (PDF), vol. 14, eLaw J., archived from the original (https://elaw.murd
och.edu.au/archives/issues/2007/1/eLaw_legal%20issues%20for%20wikis.pdf) (PDF) on
December 22, 2012
4. Cunningham, Ward (June 27, 2002). "What is a Wiki" (https://www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWik
i). WikiWikiWeb. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20080416212802/https://www.wiki.org/
wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki) from the original on April 16, 2008. Retrieved April 10, 2008.
5. "Hawaiian Words; Hawaiian to English" (https://www.mauimapp.com/moolelo/hwnwdshw.htm).
mauimapp.com. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20080914154748/https://www.mauimap
p.com/moolelo/hwnwdshw.htm) from the original on September 14, 2008. Retrieved
September 19, 2008.
6. Hasan, Heather (2012), Wikipedia, 3.5 million articles and counting (https://archive.org/details/
wikipedia35milli0000hasa/page/11), New York : Rosen Central, p. 11 (https://archive.org/detail
s/wikipedia35milli0000hasa/page/11), ISBN 9781448855575, archived (https://web.archive.org/
web/20191026122531/https://archive.org/details/wikipedia35milli0000hasa/page/11) from the
original on October 26, 2019, retrieved August 6, 2019
7. Andrews, Lorrin (1865), A dictionary of the Hawaiian language to which is appended an
English-Hawaiian vocabulary and a chronological table of remarkable events (https://archive.or
g/details/dictionaryofhawa00andrrich/), Henry M. Whitney, p. 514, archived (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20140815064248/https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofhawa00andrrich/) from the
original on August 15, 2014, retrieved June 1, 2014
8. "Alexa Top Sites" (https://www.alexa.com/topsites). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2015
0302173920/https://www.alexa.com/topsites) from the original on March 2, 2015. Retrieved
December 1, 2016.
9. "Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia).
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved January 14, 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 10/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

10. Leuf, Bo; Cunningham, Ward (2001). The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web (https://b
ooks.google.com/books?id=JmvbAAAAMAAJ). Addison-Wesley. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-201-71499-
9.
11. "Wiki Design Principles" (https://web.archive.org/web/20020430181259/https://c2.com/cgi/wiki?
WikiDesignPrinciples). Archived from the original (https://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples)
on April 30, 2002. Retrieved April 30, 2002.
12. Dohrn, Hannes; Riehle, Dirk (2011). "Design and implementation of the Sweble Wikitext parser:
Unlocking the structured data of Wikipedia" (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2038558.2038571).
Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. ACM.
pp. 72–81. doi:10.1145/2038558.2038571 (https://doi.org/10.1145%2F2038558.2038571).
ISBN 978-1-4503-0909-7.
13. Ebersbach 2008, p. 178
14. "Frequently Asked Questions" (https://web.archive.org/web/20070810213702/https://wikinodes.
wiki.taoriver.net/moin.fcg/FrequentlyAskedQuestions). WikiNodes. Archived from the original (h
ttps://wikinodes.wiki.taoriver.net/moin.fcg/FrequentlyAskedQuestions) on August 10, 2007.
15. Bäckström, A., & Wändin, L. (2005). Spatial Hypertext Editing Tools for Wiki Web Systems.
16. Adams, Clifford (April 26, 2001). "UseModWiki/OldVersions" (http://www.usemod.org/cgi-bin/wi
ki.pl?UseModWiki/OldVersions). Retrieved July 25, 2024.
17. Ebersbach 2008, p. 10
18. Cunningham, Ward (November 1, 2003). "Correspondence on the Etymology of Wiki" (https://c
2.com/doc/etymology.html). WikiWikiWeb. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20070317120
823/https://c2.com/doc/etymology.html) from the original on March 17, 2007. Retrieved
March 9, 2007.
19. Cunningham, Ward (February 25, 2008). "Wiki History" (https://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiHistory).
WikiWikiWeb. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20020621221535/https://c2.com/cgi/wiki?
WikiHistory) from the original on June 21, 2002. Retrieved March 9, 2007.
20. Bill Venners (October 20, 2003). "Exploring with Wiki: A Conversation with Ward Cunningham,
Part I" (https://www.artima.com/intv/wiki.html). artima developer. Archived (https://web.archive.
org/web/20150205091836/https://www.artima.com/intv/wiki.html) from the original on February
5, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
21. Cunningham, Ward (July 26, 2007). "Wiki Wiki Hyper Card" (https://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiHy
perCard). WikiWikiWeb. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20070406064446/https://c2.co
m/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiHyperCard) from the original on April 6, 2007. Retrieved March 9, 2007.
22. Diamond, Graeme (March 1, 2007). "March 2007 update" (https://www.oed.com/public/update0
703/march-2007-update). Oxford English Dictionary. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/201
10107132110/https://www.oed.com/public/update0703/march-2007-update) from the original
on January 7, 2011. Retrieved March 16, 2007.
23. Ward Cunningham [@WardCunningham] (November 8, 2014). "The plural of wiki is wiki. See
https://forage.ward.fed.wiki.org/an-install-of-wiki.html" (https://x.com/WardCunningham/status/5
31149812976996352) (Tweet). Retrieved March 18, 2019 – via Twitter.
24. "Smallest Federated Wiki" (https://forage.ward.fed.wiki.org/view/an-install-of-wiki). wiki.org.
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20150928165957/https://forage.ward.fed.wiki.org/view/a
n-install-of-wiki) from the original on September 28, 2015. Retrieved September 28, 2015.
25. Naomi, Augar; Raitman, Ruth; Zhou, Wanlei (2004). "Teaching and learning online with wikis".
Proceedings of Beyond the Comfort Zone: 21st ASCILITE Conference: 95–104.
CiteSeerX 10.1.1.133.1456 (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.133.14
56).
26. Cubric, Marija (2007). "Analysis of the use of Wiki-based collaborations in enhancing student
learning" (https://web.archive.org/web/20110515005430/https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/dspace/handl
e/2299/3672). UH Business School Working Paper. University of Hertfordshire. Archived from
the original (https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2299/3672) on May 15, 2011. Retrieved
April 25, 2011.
27. Ebersbach 2008, p. 20
28. Ebersbach 2008, p. 54
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 11/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

29. Ebersbach 2008, p. 109

30. Goldman, Eric, "Wikipedia's Labor Squeeze and its Consequences", Journal on
Telecommunications and High Technology Law, 8
31. Ebersbach 2008, p. 108
32. Noveck, Beth Simone (March 2007), "Wikipedia and the Future of Legal Education" (https://hei
nonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/jled57&div=8&id=&pa
ge=), Journal of Legal Education, 57 (1), archived (https://web.archive.org/web/201407030058
42/https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals%2Fjled5
7&div=8&id=&page=) from the original on July 3, 2014(subscription required)
33. Barsky, Eugene; Giustini, Dean (December 2007). "Introducing Web 2.0: wikis for health
librarians" (https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/497/c07-036.pdf) (PDF). Journal of the
Canadian Health Libraries Association. 28 (4): 147–150. doi:10.5596/c07-036 (https://doi.org/1
0.5596%2Fc07-036). ISSN 1708-6892 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1708-6892). Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20120430195019/https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/497/
c07-036.pdf) (PDF) from the original on April 30, 2012. Retrieved November 7, 2011.
34. Yager, Kevin (March 16, 2006). "Wiki ware could harness the Internet for science" (https://doi.o
rg/10.1038%2F440278a). Nature. 440 (7082): 278. Bibcode:2006Natur.440..278Y (https://ui.ad
sabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006Natur.440..278Y). doi:10.1038/440278a (https://doi.org/10.1038%2
F440278a). ISSN 0028-0836 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0028-0836). PMID 16541049 (htt
ps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16541049).
35. Hicks, Jesse (February 18, 2014). "This machine kills trolls" (https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/
18/5412636/this-machine-kills-trolls-how-wikipedia-robots-snuff-out-vandalism). The Verge.
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20140827115824/https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/18/5
412636/this-machine-kills-trolls-how-wikipedia-robots-snuff-out-vandalism) from the original on
August 27, 2014. Retrieved September 7, 2014.
36. "List of largest (Media)wikis" (https://web.archive.org/web/20140825164715/https://s23.org/wiki
stats/largest_html.php?sort=users_desc&th=8000&lines=500). S23-Wiki. April 3, 2008.
Archived from the original (https://s23.org/wikistats/largest_html.php?sort=users_desc&th=800
0&lines=500) on August 25, 2014. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
37. "Alexa Top 500 Global Sites" (https://www.alexa.com/topsites). Alexa Internet. Archived (https://
web.archive.org/web/20150302173920/https://www.alexa.com/topsites) from the original on
March 2, 2015. Retrieved April 26, 2015.
38. Boulos, M. N. K.; Maramba, I.; Wheeler, S. (2006), "Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new
generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education", BMC
Medical Education, 6: 41, doi:10.1186/1472-6920-6-41 (https://doi.org/10.1186%2F1472-6920-
6-41), PMC 1564136 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1564136),
PMID 16911779 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16911779)
39. Müller, C.; Birn, L. (September 6–8, 2006). "Wikis for Collaborative Software Documentation"
(https://web.archive.org/web/20110706095145/https://i-know.tugraz.at/wp-content/uploads/200
8/11/47_wikis-for-collaborative-software-documentation.pdf) (PDF). i-know.tugraz.at.
Proceedings of I-KNOW '06. Archived from the original (https://i-know.tugraz.at/wp-content/uplo
ads/2008/11/47_wikis-for-collaborative-software-documentation.pdf) (PDF) on July 6, 2011.
40. Majchrzak, A.; Wagner, C.; Yates, D. (2006), "Corporate wiki users: results of a survey",
Proceedings of the 2006 international symposium on Wikis, Symposium on Wikis, pp. 99–104,
doi:10.1145/1149453.1149472 (https://doi.org/10.1145%2F1149453.1149472), ISBN 978-1-
59593-413-0, S2CID 13206858 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:13206858)
41. Grudin, Jonathan; Poole, Erika Shehan (2015). "Wikis at work: Success factors and challenges
for sustainability of enterprise wikis" (https://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id
=138573). Microsoft Research. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20150904031729/https://
research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=138573) from the original on September 4,
2015. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
42. Conlin, Michelle (November 28, 2005), "E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago" (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20121017131307/https://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-11-27/e-mail-is-so-five-m
inutes-ago), Bloomberg BusinessWeek, archived from the original (https://www.businessweek.
com/stories/2005-11-27/e-mail-is-so-five-minutes-ago) on October 17, 2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 12/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

43. "HomePage" (https://projectmanagementwiki.org). Project Management Wiki.org. Archived (htt

ps://web.archive.org/web/20140816221509/https://projectmanagementwiki.org/) from the
original on August 16, 2014. Retrieved May 8, 2012.
44. "Ways to Wiki: Project Management" (https://www.editme.com/Ways-to-Wiki-Project-Managem
ent). EditMe. January 4, 2010. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20120508152328/https://
www.editme.com/Ways-to-Wiki-Project-Management) from the original on May 8, 2012.
45. Wanderley, M. M.; Birnbaum, D.; Malloch, J. (2006). "SensorWiki.org: a collaborative resource
for researchers and interface designers" (https://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1142215.11422
59). NIME '06 Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression.
IRCAM – Centre Pompidou: 180–183. ISBN 978-2-84426-314-8.
46. Lombardo, Nancy T. (June 2008). "Putting Wikis to Work in Libraries". Medical Reference
Services Quarterly. 27 (2): 129–145. doi:10.1080/02763860802114223 (https://doi.org/10.108
0%2F02763860802114223). PMID 18844087 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18844087).
S2CID 11552140 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:11552140).
47. Noveck, Beth Simone (2007). "Wikipedia and the Future of Legal Education" (https://heinonlin
e.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/jled57&id=11&div=&collection=). Journal of Legal
Education. 57: 3.
48. Au, C. H. (December 2017). "Wiki as a research support system – A trial in information
systems research". 2017 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and
Engineering Management (IEEM). pp. 2271–2275. doi:10.1109/IEEM.2017.8290296 (https://do
i.org/10.1109%2FIEEM.2017.8290296). ISBN 978-1-5386-0948-4. S2CID 44029462 (https://ap
i.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:44029462).
49. Au, Cheuk-hang. "Using Wiki for Project Collaboration – with Comparison on Facebook" (http
s://www.iaeng.org/publication/WCECS2014/WCECS2014_pp358-363.pdf) (PDF). Archived (htt
ps://web.archive.org/web/20190412152358/https://www.iaeng.org/publication/WCECS2014/W
CECS2014_pp358-363.pdf) (PDF) from the original on April 12, 2019.
50. Andersen, Michael (November 6, 2009). "Welcome to Davis, Calif.: Six lessons from the
world's best local wiki" (https://www.niemanlab.org/2009/11/welcome-to-davis-calif-six-lessons-
from-the-worlds-best-local-wiki/). Nieman Lab. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130808
084426/https://www.niemanlab.org/2009/11/welcome-to-davis-calif-six-lessons-from-the-worlds
-best-local-wiki/) from the original on August 8, 2013. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
51. McGann, Laura (June 18, 2010). "Knight News Challenge: Is a wiki site coming to your city?
Local Wiki will build software to make it simple" (https://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/knight-ne
ws-challenge-is-a-wiki-site-coming-to-your-city-local-wiki-will-build-software-to-make-it-simple/).
Nieman Lab. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130625035936/https://www.niemanlab.or
g/2010/06/knight-news-challenge-is-a-wiki-site-coming-to-your-city-local-wiki-will-build-software
-to-make-it-simple/) from the original on June 25, 2013. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
52. Wired: Makice, Kevin (July 15, 2009). Hey, Kid: Support Your Local Wiki (https://archive.wired.c
om/geekdad/2009/07/hey-kid-support-your-local-wiki/) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2
0150427080359/https://archive.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/hey-kid-support-your-local-wiki/)
April 27, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
53. Roth, C.; Taraborelli, D.; Gilbert, N. (2008). "Measuring wiki viability. An empirical assessment
of the social dynamics of a large sample of wikis" (https://nitens.org/docs/wikidyn.pdf) (PDF).
nitens.org. The Centre for Research in Social Simulation: 3. Archived (https://web.archive.org/
web/20171011105517/https://nitens.org/docs/wikidyn.pdf) (PDF) from the original on October
11, 2017. "Figure 4 shows that having a relatively high number of administrators for a given
content size is likely to reduce growth."
54. Roth, C.; Taraborelli, D.; Gilbert, N. (2008). "Measuring wiki viability. An empirical assessment
of the social dynamics of a large sample of wikis" (https://web.archive.org/web/2012061620403
8/https://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1565/1/fulltext.pdf) (PDF). Surrey Research Insight Open Access.
The Centre for Research in Social Simulation. Archived from the original (https://epubs.surrey.a
c.uk:80/1565/1/fulltext.pdf) (PDF) on June 16, 2012. Retrieved November 9, 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 13/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

55. Walsh, Kathleen M.; Oh, Sarah (February 23, 2010). "Self-Regulation: How Wikipedia
Leverages User-Generated Quality Control Under Section 230" (https://web.archive.org/web/2
0140106040705/https://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=sarah_o
h). Archived from the original (https://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&con
text=sarah_oh) on January 6, 2014.
56. Myers, Ken S. (2008), "Wikimmunity: Fitting the Communications Decency Act to Wikipedia" (ht
tps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916529), Harvard Journal of Law and
Technology, 20, The Berkman Center for Internet and Society: 163, SSRN 916529 (https://pap
ers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916529), archived (https://web.archive.org/web/202
40124221800/https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=2560970880740250841130930770
2501608111604805604307001800410209807007311311809006910006203512702402405600
808207107102510612003704707300304012109412608606408210902600905712600001006
5095025066118082112066000081066084026080001028089015088099022125003&EXT=pdf
&INDEX=TRUE) from the original on January 24, 2024
57. Jarvis, Joshua (May 2008), "Police your marks in a wiki world" (https://heinonline.org/HOL/Lan
dingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/manintpr179&div=31&id=&page=),
Managing Intellectual Property, 179 (179): 101–103, archived (https://web.archive.org/web/201
60304044437/https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journ
als%2Fmanintpr179&div=31&id=&page=) from the original on March 4, 2016
58. "Atlassian" (https://summit.atlassian.com/). Summit.atlassian.com. Archived (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20110613081406/https://summit.atlassian.com/) from the original on June 13, 2011.
Retrieved June 20, 2011.
59. "SMWCon" (https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon). Semantic-mediawiki.org. Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20110714183910/https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon)
from the original on July 14, 2011. Retrieved June 20, 2011.
60. "TikiFest" (https://tiki.org/TikiFest). Tiki.org. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20110630070
137/https://tiki.org/TikiFest) from the original on June 30, 2011. Retrieved June 20, 2011.
61. "Regiowiki Main Page" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090813101324/https://wiki.regiowiki.eu/
Main_Page). Wiki.regiowiki.eu. Archived from the original (https://wiki.regiowiki.eu/Main_Page)
on August 13, 2009. Retrieved June 20, 2011.

Sources
Ebersbach, Anja (2008), Wiki: Web Collaboration, Springer Science+Business Media,
ISBN 978-3-540-35150-4

Further reading
Mader, Stewart (2007), Wikipatterns (https://archive.org/details/wikipatternsapra00made), John
Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-0-470-22362-8
Tapscott, Don (2008), Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Portfolio
Hardcover, ISBN 978-1-59184-193-7

External links
Exploring with Wiki (https://www.artima.com/articles/exploring-with-wiki), an interview with
Ward Cunningham
Murphy, Paula (April 2006). Topsy-turvy World of Wiki (https://web.archive.org/web/201107091
01821/https://www.ucop.edu/tltc/news/2006/04/wiki.html). University of California.
Ward Cunningham's correspondence with etymologists (https://c2.com/doc/etymology.html)
WikiIndex and WikiApiary (https://wikiapiary.com), directories of wikis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 14/15
3/17/25, 9:10 PM Wiki - Wikipedia

WikiMatrix (https://www.wikimatrix.org/), a website for comparing wiki software and hosts

wikiteam (https://github.com/WikiTeam/wikiteam) on GitHub

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wiki&oldid=1280499208"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 15/15