What Is a Wiki, and How Does It Format Information.

A wiki (i/ˈwɪki/ wik-ee) is a website whose users can add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor.[1][2][3] Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often created collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include community websites, corporate intranets, knowledge management systems, and notetaking.

Wikis may serve many different purposes. 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]Contents [hide]

1 History

2 Characteristics

2.1 Editing wiki pages

2.2 Navigation

2.3 Linking and creating pages

3 Implementations

4 Trust and security

4.1 Controlling changes

4.2 Searching

4.3 Trustworthiness

4.4 Security

5 Communities

6 Conferences

7 Rules

8 Legal environment

9 See also

10 References

11 Further reading

12 External links

History

Main article: History of wikis

Wiki Wiki Shuttle at Honolulu International Airport

WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki.[6] Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in Portland, Oregon, in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com[7] on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" bus that runs between the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web."[8][9]

Cunningham was in part inspired by Apple's HyperCard. Apple had designed a system allowing...