What is a Wiki? How does it work?

## What is a wiki?

*This description was adopted from the Wikipedia article on Wiki*

### Definition

A **wiki** is an *application*, a software, typically a web application, which allows *collaborative* modification, extension, or deletion of its content and structure.

### Distinctive characteristics

While a wiki is a type of *content management system*, it differs from a blog or most other such systems in that the content is created *without* any *defined owner* or leader, and wikis have little *implicit structure*, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users.

### Uses

There are many sites running many different kinds of wiki software. Wikis can serve many different purposes both *public* and *private*, including *knowledge management, notetaking, community websites*and *intranets*.

The encyclopedia project Wikipedia is the most popular wiki on the public web in terms of page views.

### Participants

The four basic types of users who participate in wikis are *reader*, *author*, *wiki administrator* and *system administrator*. The system administrator is responsible for installation and maintenance of the wiki engine and the container web server. The wiki administrator maintains wiki content and is provided additional functions pertaining to pages (e.g. page protection and deletion), and can adjust users' access rights by, for instance, blocking them from editing.

### History

*Ward Cunningham* started developing *WikiWikiWeb* in Portland, Oregon, in *1994*, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com 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. "Wiki" is a Hawaiian word meaning "quick".

### Summary

*Ward Cunningham*, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as *"the simplest online database that could possibly work"*.

## How does a wiki work?

*This description was adopted from the Wikipedia article on Wiki*

### Editing

* 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*.
* Some are open for editing by anyone, 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 to organize content.
* In a typical wiki, text is written using a simplified markup language (known as "wiki markup") or a rich-text editor.

### Benefit - Associations (navigation - information network)

* 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.

### Changes

Some wikis keep a *record of changes* made to wiki pages; often, every version of the page is stored. This means that authors can revert to an older version of the page, should it be necessary because a mistake has been made or the page has been vandalized.

Many implementations, like MediaWiki, allow users to supply an *edit summary* when they edit a page; this is a short piece of text summarising the changes. It is not inserted into the article, but is stored along with that revision of the page, allowing users to explain what has been done and why.

## How to choose a suitable wiki type

*This description was adopted from Pumacy technologies' article: Spoilt for Choice – Wiki Software for Knowledge Management in Organisations*

There are currently dozens of actively maintained wiki engines, in a variety of programming languages, including both *open source* and *proprietary* applications. These vary widely in their platform support, their support for natural language characters and conventions, and in their assumptions about technical versus social control of editing.

### Purpose

Using wiki software helps *analyse*, *structure*, *gain* and *transfer* knowledge, experience, skills, and networks within an organisation. Wikis encourage the process of informal learning.

* Generally, organisations want to make sure that the name of an author—the provider of knowledge—appears in the article. Roles and permission are individually managed in order to protect valuable knowledge—such as customer knowledge from misuse. However, the intention of organisations to track and monitor relevant decisions and activities is hardly consistent with the traditional wiki concept offering each and every user the possibility to modify articles anonymously.

There are several wiki software applications available at the market. The portal WikiMatrix provides the opportunity to compare almost all wiki applications.

### Basic requirements for organizations

* The wiki software has to be a**known and recognised software application**. It has to be technically matured, launched and established on the market (a. *Development Status Mature*). This aspect guarantees *long-term availability* and *further developments* of the wiki software. The degree of activity of the community behind the software and the number of support partners can be an indication of the maturity level of the software (b. *Commercial **Support***).
* **Security** – wikis used in organisations are accessible exclusively to employees. Additionally, some parts of the application are only accessible to a limited number of authorised persons. All staff are given access rights and privileges. Wikis have to meet specific levels of security that are set by the organisation. Levels of security are c. Page Permissions (area-specific access), d. Access Control Lists (rights for users or groups per page).
* **Customisability** – wikis have to be *adaptable* to the needs of organisations. A certain similarity in menu navigation and procedures of interaction are important to increase user acceptance. Design and layout should be adaptable to *corporate design* guidelines. Customisability includes e. Plugins.
* **Systems integration** – the wiki software should allow the integration with existing systems. The f. LDAP user authentication and g. Active Directory will be used as indicators. Employees should use their *personal login* details for email, internet and the wiki software. This approach can ease *administration*. Furthermore, *office* and Microsoft SharePoint might be important, too, in this context. Large organisations using database systems base their decision for a wiki on whether or not the software solution can be connected to their database.
* **Ease of use / usability** – ease of use helps employees to more readily accept the wiki software and become productive on it. This includes h. WYSIWYG text editors (“What you see is what you get“- corresponds to text processing with Office programs), i. Page Templates (previously defined template structure similar to Office templates).

### Suitable wikis for organizations

The following part provides a list of all seven Wikis together with the above mentioned criteria.

**Confluence**

* most popular commercial enterprise wiki
* offers a wide range of key features and additional functionalities that are important in

the business context: a WYSIWYGeditor (rich text editor) with features comparable to Microsoft Word

* user-friendly design
* Content can be organised into spaces, hierarchies, subpages as well as by means of keywords

and links

* users can search all content, including attachments
* provides SharePoint integration and allows editing content with Microsoft Office,

supports the import of office documents

* Users are assigned roles and permissions.
* workflow plug-in supports broad workflow capabilities as part of content approval and

publication and helps ensure the quality of contents.

* Confluence is a commercial product and therefore requires a license

**DokuWiki**

* easy to handle system with basic key features of a wiki
* simple syntax + plug-in-based WYSIWYG editor
* plain text files to store data instead database - current database systems can be fully

integrated

* requires minimal system specifications
* developed to support documentation
* Its greatest strength lies in the assignment of permission and roles to users and

groups that allows to set permission to individual pages and namespace levels
**DrupalWiki**

* aimed at organisations and supports creation of content
* The content is stored in a database and can be categorised
* users can create blogs, provide a forum or discuss with each other
* Users can be assigned roles and permissions
* allows users to search all content, including attachments
* provides a document management system as well as closed project and team rooms
* allows users to define individual workflows while being able set fine grained permissions on each state transition
* can be integrated with IT environments such as SAP, Magento or SharePoint

**MediaWiki**

* was created to meet the needs of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia
* the most popular wiki solution
* open source solution and constantly being refined
* Its greatest strength lies in its popularity and user acceptance.
* Ease of use and a design which ensures readability and clarity are principle design features of MediaWiki
* every wiki page has an associated talk page which can be used for discussion and communicating with other users
* keywords (tagging)
* provides a plug-in-based WYSIWYG editor
* MediaWiki was developed for the use as open wiki software in the internet
* three groups of users (anonym, signed on user, and administrator)
* there is no access control page available—an instance which does not meet the safety requirements of a corporate wiki software solution

**TWiki**

* was designed as a collaboration platform and is suitable for the structured storing of information
* no database required for storing information
* The software uses plain text files to store data which leads to a lack of security standards.
* primarily used in intranets of medium and large organisations
* Users can easily be assigned roles and permissions
* TWiki allows internal and external users to access the wiki
* A WYSIWYG editor and the permission and role management component are implemented by default
* Variables and forms can be processed using the wiki syntax.

**Foswiki**

* came into existence byFoswiki separation of the TWiki community
* simple programming of applications by means of metadata
* plug-ins help extend the features of Foswiki
* Foswiki provides similar functionalities as TWiki.

**TikiWiki CMS Groupware**

* efficient open source content management system including a wiki with additional features such as blogs and workflow management
* provides access restriction and management of rolls
* the wiki is known for being cluttered with distracting features

### Requirements for Wikis in knowledge management

**Easy content creation** – Features such as *WYSIWYG* editor (at least available as plug in) and *file attachments* can be considered as basic requirements for enterprise wikis. Confluence provides special usability benefits allowing users to edit wikis directly in Microsoft Office. Files can be imported with *drag and drop*.

**Comments and discussions** – Confluence, Drupal Wiki, and TikiWiki provide simple but fully-developed commenting functions. DokuWiki and Foswiki offer this feature as plug in. MediaWiki offers this feature for all articles.

**Export / import** – with all wiki solutions documents can be exported to PDF, available at least as plug in.

**Creating content areas in wikis** – content areas in wikis can be created with all wikis presented in this article. However, it has to be considered how much effort is required to create a comprehensive structure. The structure of content areas can be broken down into more precise levels.

**Rights and permissions**– wiki users and user groups (with exception of MediaWiki) are provided with rights and permission.

**Classification**– the advantage of MediaWiki lies in its flexibility in classifying content into subject categories. Confluence, for example, allows tags but has no functionalities for assigning categories.

**Linkage**– Some of the wikis—such as Confluence, Drupal, and MediaWiki—have a link system which supports users in linking contents and updating of links if content is renamed or moved within the system.

**Search** – searching in attachments is only partially provided, i.e. by Confluence, DrupalWiki, Foswiki, TikiWiki, and TWiki.

**Permanent access** – this criterion shows possibilities of external access via internet and mobile phone.

**Email notification and RSS feed** – this criterion shows possibilities for monitoring of changes in relevant documents.

**Statistics** – all wikis help to keep track of changes users made to a document. Additionally, there are functionalities which provide information on hits per page and user activities.

**Information on authors** – this feature helps users to find out personal details about the author of a document such as departmental membership, expertise, and project experience.

**Workflow** – Documents are managed through the workflow and approved for release.

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The best way to find a suitable wiki software is to compare them at http://www.wikimatrix.org/.

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You also can find useful tutorials on the internet or you can read this book: Wikis for Dummies

## Thrustworthyness and security

*This description was adopted from the Wikipedia article on Wiki*

Generally, there is *no review* before modifications are accepted. Many wikis are open to alteration by the general public *without* requiring *registration* of user accounts. Many edits can be made in *real-time* and appear almost instantly online. However, this feature facilitates abuse of the system. *Private wiki servers require user authentication to edit pages, and sometimes even to read them.*

### Controlling changes

Wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them.

"Recent Changes" page: a specific list numbering recent edits, or a list of edits made within a given time frame

A person willing to maintain pages will be warned of modifications to the pages, allowing him or her to verify the validity of new editions quickly. A watchlist is a common implementation of this.

### Trustworthiness

High editorial standards in medicine have led to the idea of expert-moderated wikis. Some wikis allow one to link to specific versions of articles, which has been useful to the scientific community, in that expert peer reviewers could analyse articles, improve them and provide links to the trusted version of that article.

Noveck points out that "participants are accredited by members of the wiki community, who have a vested interest in preserving the quality of the work product, on the basis of their ongoing participation." On controversial topics that have been subject to disruptive editing, a wiki may restrict editing to registered users.

### Malwares

Malware can also be problem, as users can add links to sites hosting malicious code. For example, a German Wikipedia article about the Blaster Worm was edited to include a hyperlink to a malicious website. Users of vulnerable Microsoft Windows systems who followed the link would be infected.

A countermeasure is the use of software that prevents users from saving an edit that contains a link to a site listed on a blacklist of malware sites.

### Social Darwinism

'Unfit' sentences and sections are ruthlessly culled, edited and replaced if they are not considered 'fit', which hopefully results in the evolution of a higher quality and more relevant page. While such openness may invite 'vandalism' and the posting of untrue information, this same openness also makes it possible to rapidly correct or restore a 'quality' wiki page.

### Legal aspects

Joint authorship of articlesin which different users participate in correcting, editing, and compiling the finished product, can cause editors to become *tenants in common* of the copyright, making it impossible to republish without the permission of all co-owners, some of whose identities may be unknown due to *pseudonymous or anonymous* editing.

1. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
2. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
3. ↑ https://www.pumacy.de/en/publications/studies/wikis-for-knowledge-management/
4. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki