Semantics in Wiki - Community-Built Databases: Research and Development - page 239

- Webs: Pages are grouped into TWiki Webs (or collections). This allows the
setting up of separate collaboration groups.
- Search: Full-text search with/without regular expressions (see a sample
search result).
- E-mail notification: a user is automatically notified when something has
changed in a TWiki Web. Subscribe in WebNotify.
- Structured content: TWiki Forms are used to classify and categorise unstruc-
tured Web pages and to create simple workflow systems.
- File attachments: Any file can be uploaded and downloaded as an attachment
to a page by using the browser. This is similar to file attachments in an e-mail,
albeit on Web pages.
- Revision control: All changes to pages and attachments are tracked. Previous
page revisions and differences can be retrieved and tracked to determine who
has made the change and when.
- Access control: Allows groups to be defined and imposes fine-grained read
and write access restrictions based on groups and users.
- Variables: Variables are used to dynamically compose pages. This allows the
user, for example, to dynamically build a table of contents, include other
pages or show a search result embedded in a page.
- TWiki Plugins : TWiki functionality can be enhanced with server side Plugin
modules. Developers can create Perl Plugins using the TWiki Plugin API.
10.2.3 Wikipedia
The most popular Wiki is Wikipedia. This online collaborative encyclopaedia
project is one of the most visited Websites in the world. But Wikipedia is
just one part to of a bigger picture. The Wikimedia Foundation [ 2 ], which runs
Wikipedia, also hosts several other reference sites like Wiktionary and Wikiquotes.
Wikipedia was “born” on 15 January 2001 and was created by Jimbo Wales and
Larry Sanger. It was conceived as an encyclopaedia based on the Wiki principle,
that is, an encyclopaedia which could be edited by anyone [ 7 ]. The first version of
Wikipedia was created in English, and it was soon followed by a version in French,
created on 11 May 2001.
Wikipedia is a general encyclopaedia with diversified contents. Articles in
Wikipedia are categorised by topics into subcategories, thus forming a hierarchical
structure of Wikipedia contents. Wikipedia is a free encyclopaedia, well established
as the world's largest online collection of encyclopaedic knowledge. It is also
an example of global collaboration within an open community of volunteers.
Wikipedia is based on the MediaWiki software. The idea of Wikipedia is to allow
everyone to edit and extend the encyclopaedic content (or simply correct typos).
Wikipedia also contains numerous articles that are meant to enhance the browsing
of Wikipedia besides the encyclopaedic articles on many subjects. These include
lists of the countries of the world, sorted by area, population and the index of free