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Wikis

Wikileaks, the website which publishes leaked documents online alleging government and corporate misconduct, has been in the news a lot lately. You would have to have been hiding in a cave (perhaps in Afghanistan) to have missed the reportage around the information Wikileaks was pumping out around the US “war on terror”.

It’s obvious what the website does, but where does it get the first four letter of its name and what do they mean?

What's a wiki?

Wiki is Hawaiian for “fast” and, in nerd speak, is “a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser”.

That’s according to an article on the Wikipedia website which happens to be a wiki too. I can read and edit Wikipedia even though I didn’t write it. If I didn’t agree with the definition I could re-write it with the knowledge that other readers have the same power to change it back if my definition is off the wall.

Ward Cunningham, who developed the first wiki software called WikiWikiWeb, chose the word because it reflects the instantaneous nature of creating a wiki webpage.

Usually wikis, which use a WSYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) text editor, are powered by specialist software designed to encourage collaboration across the world.

Wiki for work

The best example of a wiki is “Wikipedia” www.wikipedia.org, which has become an online encyclopedia unsurpassed by any other.

There was a time, in Wikipedia’s early days, when academic institutions would not accept citations from Wikipedia in essays but that has changed with the vast numbers of watchdogs who stand guardian over the information posted and check its accuracy.

Businesses share information, internally, on wikis hosted on their internet and chambers of commerce have been known to post wiki pages for their members to collaborate on.

As well as the worthy goal of in information sharing for education, wiki’s are also used for entertainment.

Wiki for play

The most popular wiki on the Wikia collaborative publishing platform is Wookieepedia, which takes its name from Han Solo’s Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca. “Star Wars movies, characters, and spin-offs are catalogued in Wookieepedia, a comprehensive database that anyone can edit,” it boasts on its home page. At the time of writing it had 81,385 pages.

Chewbacca’s page, for example, is approximately 40 printed pages long. All the people who love Chewbacca have taken the time to write about every piece of Chewbacca trivia created since his first appearance in 1977.

The Tardis Index File is devoted to Doctor Who, which is handy for anyone wanting to look back over nearly 50 years of adventures, and Memory Alpha is devoted to Star Trek, which spawned five spin off television series and 11 motion pictures.

It’s not just science fiction which inspires such a following - Corriepedia is devoted to Coronation Street – and there’s heaps more.

Wikia.com also hosts gaming and lifestyle wikis on its website. The top three lifestyle wikis are Recipes Wiki, a recipe database anyone can edit, Superpower Wiki, a community site that anyone can use to discover, share and add to their knowledge, and Vintage Sewing Patterns featuring templates from the 1900s to the 1980s that anyone can add to.

Try searching for your favourite subject, followed by the word "wiki", to see if someone has started a wiki on it. If not, why not consider starting one yourself. The sky’s the limit.