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. In the early 2000s, wikis were increasingly adopted in enterprise as collaborative software. 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. This syntax was adopted by a number of later wiki engines.
In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Wikipedia introduced an assessment scale of the quality of articles. Various suggestions have been made, ranging from standardizing a single form of English to creating separate versions of the English Wikipedia project. The English Wikipedia is the most read version of Wikipedia, accounting for 48% of Wikipedia’s cumulative traffic, with the remaining percentage split among the other languages. Its content, written independently of other editions by volunteer editors known as Wikipedians, is in various varieties of English while aiming to stay consistent within articles.
- Various suggestions have been made, ranging from standardizing a single form of English to creating separate versions of the English Wikipedia project.
- Some hosting services offer private, password-protected wikis requiring authentication to access.
- Version 2 of the GNU Free Documentation License includes a specific provision for wiki relicensing, and Creative Commons licenses are also popular.
- To avoid this problem, the syntax of wiki markup gained free links (called wikilinks), wherein a term in natural language could be wrapped in special characters to turn it into a link without modifying it.
- Some wikis can filter the list to remove edits flagged by users as “minor” and automated edits.
Common uses included project communication, intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users. Cunningham’s system was inspired by his having used Apple’s hypertext software HyperCard, which allowed users to create interlinked “stacks” of virtual cards. 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. 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. 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”).
Navigation between wikis
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. 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. Some wikis present users with an edit button or link on the page being viewed. Wikipedia is not a single wiki but rather a collection of hundreds of wikis, with each one pertaining to a specific language, making it the largest reference work of all time.
History
The range of quality classes begins with “Stub” (very short pages), followed by “Start”, “C” and “B” (in increasing order of quality). The study identified the most disputed entries on the English Wikipedia as George W. Bush, anarchism, Muhammad, list of WWE personnel, global warming, circumcision, United States, Jesus, race and intelligence, and Christianity. In contrast, articles on other languages’ Wikipedias often focus on regional issues.
- In contrast, articles on other languages’ Wikipedias often focus on regional issues.
- 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).
- Some wikis operate a structure of neighbors and delegates, where 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.
- Its content, written independently of other editions by volunteer editors known as Wikipedians, is in various varieties of English while aiming to stay consistent within articles.
- 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.
In the mid-2000s, the increasing trend 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
royaldogs casino the classroom. 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. “Edit war” redirects here; not to be confused with Edit conflict.
Internal news publications
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. Some wikis also implement patrolled revisions, in which editors with the requisite credentials can mark edits as being legitimate. A person willing to maintain pages will be alerted of modifications to them, allowing them to verify the validity of new editions quickly. System administrators are responsible for the installation and maintenance of the wiki engine and the container web server. 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. On March 15, 2007, the word wiki was listed in the online Oxford English Dictionary.
The edit history view in many wiki implementations will include edit summaries written by users when submitting changes to a page. 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. 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. 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. 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. Some wikis can filter the list to remove edits flagged by users as “minor” and automated edits.
Contents
Such a wiki contains information about specific instances of things, ideas, people and places. The term city wiki is sometimes also used for wikis that cover not just a city, but a small town or an entire region. A city wiki or local wiki is a wiki used as a knowledge base and social network for a specific geographical locale. In academic contexts, wikis have also been used as project collaboration and research support systems.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Proponents maintain that these issues will be caught and rectified by a wiki’s community of users.
