What is Wikis and its function

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What is a Wiki?

The term Wiki is hawaiian for quick and was coined as a name for a particular type of web site. These web sites allow any visitor to easily contribute to and edit that web site using nothing more than their Internet browser (e.g. Internet Explorer). Wiki systems are particularly suited to collaborative group authoring of documents and websites. The most famous example of a Wiki is Wikipedia, a very extensive on-line encylopedia that allows anyone to add to and edit its entries (see the images below - click images to enlarge).

A term in Wikipedia Wikipedia term editing page



An example entry in Wikipedia		 Click the edit this page tab to enter the edit mode of the wiki
Offering easy and open access to editing a website obviously opens the door to malicious and erroneous changes being made (termed vandalism). For this reason Wiki systems also offer a variety of approaches for dealing with these problems. In most cases the wiki editing community itself will rapidly deal with problematic edits, but Wikis also provide facilities for some users to act as administrators (called sysops) who oversee groups of pages and have the ability to block users from editing.

Typical Wiki functionality includes:
  • Browser based editing - all wiki page edits are achieved through an associated editing page with a text entry box.
  • Access control - the ability to edit pages can be open to all visitors, or can be restricted to those with a login or limited by IP address.
  • Wiki mark up - web formating (e.g. bold, links, headings, lists etc) can be achieved within wiki content using simple mark up designed to be easier to use than HTML code.
  • Tracking version history - the page content is saved as each edit is made resulting in a timeline of different page versions.
  • Version comparison - the differences between versions of the same page can be highlighted.
  • Page version rollback (revert) - the page content can be returned to that of a previous version undoing all subsequent edits.
  • Discussion pages - each web page on the wiki has an associated discussion page where contributors can discuss the direction of the editing process.
  • Automated page edit alerts - email and/or RSS alerts can be used to identify when specific pages have been updated.
  • Locking current page version - locking a page to prevent further edits.

Posted by E-bloggers11