If you’re someone who does a lot of online research, chances are that you already know about Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This project is a phenomenon in its own right. Started in 2001, it already contains over a quarter million entries about every conceivable subject. If you do a Google search on, say, ‘Darwinism’ or ‘Deconstruction’ there is a good chance that one of the first 20 results will include one from Wikipedia.org.
On closer examination of any page on Wikipedia, you will notice an amazing link saying: ‘edit this page’. Yes you can, if you want, edit the entry on ‘Darwinism’ on this free encyclopedia and write whatever you want! And this is precisely why there’s a ‘Wiki’ in Wikipedia.
Wiki is a web technology and philosophy, that allows any site built with it, to be edited by any of its readers, using any standard web browser. The Wiki approach of total openness represents a radical implementation of a philosophy that emphasizes the collaborative nature of the web. It asks: ‘why should anyone have a monopoly over a text’.
Not only do Wikis allow you to change a web page you’re reading, but it also allows you add pages to the site and create links between them. This way, sites can grow organically, wherever their users decide to take them.
The Wiki principles
When Ward Cunningham, the designer of the original Wiki, set out to develop his technology in 1996 he didn’t fully realize where his invention will go. “Wiki has turned out to be much more than I’d imagined. That is not to say that I didn’t imagine a lot.” He writes on his web site (www.c2.com ). Some of the principles that he sought to satisfy with the first release of Wiki were that it should be:
Open – Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.
Incremental – Pages can cite other pages, including pages that have not been written yet.
Organic – The structure and text content of the site is open to editing and evolution.
Universal – The mechanisms of editing and organizing are the same as those of writing so that any writer is automatically an editor and organizer.
Tolerant – Interpretable (even if undesirable) behavior is preferred to error messages.
Observable – Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor to the site.
Convergent – Duplication can be discouraged or removed by finding and citing similar or related content.
Wikis in the mainstream
Wikipedia is only one example of Wiki technology in action, but it’s one of the most well known. Many sites that discuss computer programming issues have Wikis. Programmer groups tend to like Wikis because they enable them to collaborate on code, share information and correct each other’s work, without sending files back and forth by email.
Another interesting project utilizing Wikis (and web-logs, or blogs) is SocialText (www.socialtext.com), a company specializing in what it calls “Enterprise Social Software”. SocialText takes the power of Wikis and blogs and makes it useful for people in corporations to work together without overloading each other’s mailboxes.
Self correcting system
This “social editing” thing sounds pretty utopian to most people. So what happens when someone purposely sabotages an entry in Wikipedia. Wiki people have an answer to that: other users will correct it!