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. 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. A WikiNode is a page on a wiki which describes and links to other, related wikis.
The four basic types of users who participate in wikis are readers, authors, wiki administrators and system administrators. Some wikis use flat file databases to store page content, while others use a relational database, as indexed database access is faster on large wikis, particularly for searching. 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”.
It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and ideological bias. English Wikipedia, often as a stand-in for Wikipedia overall, has been praised for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge, extent of coverage, unique structure, culture, and reduced degree of commercial bias. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia’s first edition.
Contents
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. 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. 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. Some wiki engines provide additional content control, allowing remote monitoring and management of a page or set of pages to maintain quality. 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). 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.
Navigation between wikis
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- English Wikipedia has been characterized as having less cultural bias than other language editions due to its broader editor base.
- 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.
- 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 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.
Internal news publications
- Some wiki engines provide additional content control, allowing remote monitoring and management of a page or set of pages to maintain quality.
- On March 15, 2007, the word wiki was listed in the online Oxford English Dictionary.
- 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.
- Most wikis offer a recent changes page which shows recent edits, or a list of edits made within a given time frame.
- In that implementation, link terms were wrapped in a double set of square brackets, for example Kingdom of France.
- 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.
- It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and ideological bias.
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 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.
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.
Wikipedia’s sister projects
Other community news publications include the “WikiWorld” web comic, the Wikipedia Weekly podcast, and newsletters of specific WikiProjects like The Bugle from WikiProject Military History and the monthly newsletter from The Guild of Copy Editors. These groups may focus on a specific topic area (for example, women’s history), a specific location or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages). Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Version 2 of the GNU Free Documentation License includes a specific provision for wiki relicensing, and Creative Commons licenses are also popular.
Further reading
For the version of Wikipedia written in Basic English, see Simple English Wikipedia. Wikipedi be a free-content online encyclopedia wey community of volunteers, dem know as Wikipedians dey wrep den dey maintain am, thru open collaboration den de wiki software MediaWiki. 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. Some copyright issues can be alleviated through the use of an open content license.
The version history feature allows harmful changes to be reverted quickly and easily. Most wikis royaldogs casino offer a recent changes page which shows recent edits, or a list of edits made within a given time frame. Some hosting services offer private, password-protected wikis requiring authentication to access. 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.
