Full Circle Associates

It’s risky to talk about wikis as if they’re all the same. In practice, the term wiki (derived from the Hawaiian word for “quick”) is applied to a diverse set of systems, features, approaches, and projects. Even dedicated wikiheads engage in perpetual arguments about what constitutes true wikiness. But some fundamental principles (usually) apply.

• Anyone can change anything. Wikis are quick because the processes of reading and editing are combined. The signature of a wiki is a link at the bottom of the page reading “Edit text of this page” or something similar. Clicking that link produces the page’s hypertext markup, allowing instant revisions. Authoring software, permissions, or passwords are typically not required.
  
• Wikis use simplified hypertext markup. Wikis have their own markup language that essentially strips HTML down to its simplest elements. New users need to learn a few formatting tags, but only a few. Most wiki tags significantly streamline and simplify their tasks. For instance, the minimum HTML code needed to create a named hyperlink to EDUCAUSE Review online, EDUCAUSE Review, would be rendered in a wiki within square brackets. The result, [http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/EDUCAUSE Review], saves a minimum of twelve keystrokes and is significantly easier to remember. Raw URLs typically require no markup tags at all to be rendered live on a wiki page.
  
• WikiPageTitlesAreMashedTogether. Wiki page titles often eschew spaces to allow for quick page creation and automatic, markup-free links between pages within (and sometimes across) wiki systems. Linking to related pages is easy, which promotes promiscuous interlinking among wiki pages.
  
• Content is ego-less, time-less, and never finished. Anonymity is not required but is common. With open editing, a page can have multiple contributors, and notions of page “authorship” and “ownership” can be radically altered. Content “cloning” across wikis—sometimes referred to in non-wiki circles as “plagiarism”—is often acceptable. (This attitude toward authorship can make citations for articles such as this one a tricky exercise.) Unlike weblogs, wiki pages are rarely organized by chronology; instead they are organized by context, by links in and links out, and by whatever categories or concepts emerge in the authoring process. And for the most part, wikis are in a constant state of flux. Entries are often unpolished, and creators may deliberately leave gaps open, hoping that somebody else will come along to fill them in.