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I've heard about wiki's, even went to wikipedia to figure out what they are, and my brain must not be in full gear today. Can anyone help me understand what a wiki is and how it's used?
Look at this way, it's similar to this forum but instead of post to start a topic with subsequent replies people add to the original post and build upon it.
Let's say I start an entry in a wiki, we'll call widgets.
"Widgets are blue"
Now maybe you know about widgets better than me and know they are usually blue but can sometimes be red so you'd edit my entry:
"Widgets are usually blue but sometimes can be red."
From that other people can build on the entry, if there is any arguments about what the facts may be each wiki entry has discussion page more like a forum format where different editors can work out their differences.
If you have your own hosting you install the same software Wikipedia uses for free: MediaWiki
Using Wikipedia or any other mature wiki as an example makes it hard to grasp the concept. There is a lot of "turf" at Wikipedia, with some articles being guarded against changes by people who are enthusiastic about a topic and high-ranking people in the organization who get to decide whether what people post is worthy of including. It's more of a bureaucracy than the average wiki, which is usually more free-wheeling and loosely organized.
Here's another way to think of it that may help you begin to understand... A wiki is what City-Data would be if everyone could edit everyone else's posts. You can easily imagine that not everyone's edits will be an improvement.
A collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it. Think of it as an encyclopedia in which you can create and post your own entries and anyone can come along and edit them.
Encyclopedia's of knowledge where everyone's knowledge can be added to the whole.
So imagine if you are in a room and there is a giant whiteboard. You put a subject on the whiteboard, "rattlesnakes", and everyone in the room walks up the whiteboard and writes what they know about rattlesnakes. The keep taking turns until everyone has all their knowledge up, including differences in understanding and opinion, references, personal experience.
The end result is a page that has a comprehensive exploration of rattlesnakes from a wide berth of knowledge, background, and understanding.
The advantages of this are that the expert can detail the physiology of the rattlesnake, while the deer hunter can teach how to spot and handle an encounter with a rattle snake in the wild.
The disadvantages are that bad information can get in and sometimes is not refuted or corrected well.
Location: Mableton, GA USA (NW Atlanta suburb, 4 miles OTP)
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Originally Posted by Hoosier
I've heard about wiki's, even went to wikipedia to figure out what they are, and my brain must not be in full gear today. Can anyone help me understand what a wiki is and how it's used?
Maybe a simpler way to look at it is this: a wiki is a web site which is like a public blackboard. Anyone who is walking by can write on it or erase stuff by deleting, changing, or adding their own text, links, and pictures as they see fit.
The difference is that everything is usually logged so people can look and see who edited or removed what, and sometimes there are moderators who can lock things down or undo changed that aren't wanted.
A wiki lets anyone who knows something about a topic contribute to the page, which makes it a really neat way (at least potentially) to create a page about almost any subject.
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