The document provides an overview of wikis, including their history and key characteristics. Wikis allow for the creation and editing of interconnected web pages by users to collaboratively build and share information on various topics. They trace their conceptual origins to pre-WWW technologies like the "memex" that linked related articles. Today, wikis have proliferated across the internet through wiki software, and are used by both corporations and individuals to create customized knowledge bases. Their defining feature is the ease of creating and updating pages directly from a simple web interface.
2. Introduction
The Wiki offers a brief look at one of the most useful rising Web
2.0 technologies: the Wiki. The Wiki is a website that allows for
the creation and editing of a number of inter-connected
WebPages. Wikis can cover a number of topics from historical
topics to new technologies. As an information sharing tool, the
Wiki provides an excellent platform for group work, where
group members can build off of each others' research and
improve their findings, resulting a much more refined database
of information.
4. Pre-Modern/Modern Wikis Concepts
Before theinvention of the world wide web, precursors to the
Wiki rose in the field of communication. For example, the
"memex" concept, a microfilm reader that would create links
between related articles to allow for a "trail" of information.
Like wikis, "memex" would be self contained systems of specific
information.
Since then, wikis have exploded over the internet, with the
spread of Wiki software allowing for more individual wikis to be
created. Corporations have taken to utilizing wikis, such as
Google and Amazon, and individuals can now easily create wikis
for specific interests, such as wikis to cover video games or
television shows.
5. A Wiki is a tool in which users can create a site
Characteristics in collaboration. A defining characteristic of
Wiki technology is the ease with which pages
can be created and updated. This is possible by
the use of simple web pages that are accessed
by a user who is allowed to create and edit
directly from the page. Users then can add a
"new page" and create a new topic to the Wiki.
Usually the pages of wikis are connected by
hyperlinks, which instantly transfer a user from
page to page.
