The type of website

This article is about the type of website. For other uses, see Wiki (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Wikipedia.

"Edit summary" redirects here. For edit summaries as used in Wikipedia, see Help:Edit summary.

"WikiNode" redirects here. For the WikiNode of Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:WikiNode.

Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wikiA wiki (i/ˈwɪkiː/ WIK-ee) is a website which allows its users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser usually using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor.[1][2][3] Wikis are powered by wiki software. Most are created collaboratively.

Wikis serve many different purposes, such as knowledge management and notetaking. Wikis can be community websites and intranets, for example. 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. Other rules may also be imposed for organizing content.

Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work."[4] "Wiki" (pronounced [ˈwiti] or [ˈviti]) is a Hawaiian word meaning "fast" or "quick".[5][6]

Contents [hide]

1 Characteristics

1.1 Editing wiki pages

1.2 Navigation

1.3 Linking and creating pages

1.4 Searching

2 History

3 Implementations

4 Trust and security

4.1 Controlling changes

4.2 Trustworthiness

4.3 Security

4.3.1 Potential malware vector

5 Communities

5.1 Growth factors

6 Conferences

7 Rules

8 Legal environment

9 See also

10 References

11 Further reading

12 External links

CharacteristicsWard Cunningham and co-author Bo Leuf, in their book The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web, described the essence of the Wiki concept as follows:

A wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki Web site, using only a plain-vanilla Web browser without any extra add-ons.

Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation almost intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page exists or not.

A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape.

A wiki enables communities to write documents collaboratively, using a simple markup language and a web browser. A single page in a wiki website is

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