Wikis are collaborative web sites. See also my section on Wikipedia.

People can edit site content via a simple browser interface available right on each page. Reading or writing rights can be restricted but many site enable anyone to read or write content. Many wikis have keep histories of each page so that if some erroneous editing occurs, the page can be returned to a previous version. The strength in a wiki lies in the strength of its contributing community to create, prune, structure, and protect good content.

Because of its freeform, natural style, a Wiki functions as an informal group memory.

Although non-wiki many-to-many methods (message boards, blogs, and comment-attached web sites) can distilled by pruning and restructuring by self-moderation, self-organization, thus reducing the absurdly long threads especially threads full of relatively empty content.

Ward Cunningham invented Wikis in 1995. The term Wiki is derived from wiki wiki which is Hawaiian for "quick".

2005-09-02t16:57:17Z