Information Technology Reference
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Table 1. Some popular wiki platforms
Wiki
URL
Open Source?
Notes
DokuWiki
docuwiki.org
Y
PHP
FosWiki
foswiki.org
Y
Perl
MediaWiki
mediawiki.org
Y
PHP, used by Wikipedia
MoinMoin
moinmo.in
Y
Python
PmWiki
pmwiki.org
Y
PHP
TikiWiki
tikiwiki.org
Y
PHP
TWiki
twiki.org
Y
Perl
Confluence
atlassian.com
N
hosted or installed
PBwiki
pbwiki.com
N
hosted
SocialText
socialtext.com
N
hosted
WikiSpaces
wikispaces.com
N
hosted
the author and time of the change. This enables
users to review the page's history and evolution,
and to easily undo accidental or malicious changes,
which is particularly important for wikis (such as
WikiPedia, described below) with a culture of open
access. Third, wikis try to separate the content
of a specific page from the visual appearance of
the overall site. Thus, users can focus on putting
the right content in each page, while graphic de-
signers and the wiki platform provide consistent
headers, footers, menus, color, fonts, and other
details, so that the wiki looks like a coherent
site, not a random assortment of pages. The first
wiki was developed in 1994-1995 by Ward Cun-
ningham (Leuf & Cunningham, 2002); “wiki” is
a Hawaiian word for “quick”. Currently there are
over 100 wiki platforms, with a wide variety of
characteristics and features (CosmoCode, 2008).
Most wiki platforms are open source but there are
also commercial platforms (see table 1).
Unlike other web sites or documents which
are often controlled by a few gatekeepers, wikis
make it easy to create, edit, and link content,
so wikis can be used for personnel directories,
scheduling, and other dynamic applications. For
example, the author often uses wikis to collabo-
rate on grant proposals or other writing projects,
since all authors have access to the most current
version. At the same time, the wiki version his-
tory enables people to see who made specific
changes, and view or reinstate previous versions
of a page if necessary. Wikis also make it easy
for people to progress gradually from adding
comments and making minor changes to more
complex formatting and larger restructuring. Wikis
impose relatively little structure on content, so it
is easy to adjust the site's navigational structure,
or provide multiple parallel structures for different
uses. This flexibility can also lead to confusion,
particularly for newly created wikis; it helps to
have designated facilitators, and adopt patterns,
practices, and structures that have worked well
elsewhere (Mader, 2008).
Probably the best known wiki is Wikipedia,
“the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”
with over 2.5 million articles in English. People
unfamiliar with wikis often assume incorrectly
that Wikipedia is a typical wiki (Mader, 2008,
p. 25), but there are important differences. For
example, Wikipedia allows anonymous editing of
most pages, while many wikis restrict access to
members of a particular community, or are only
available via an institutional intranet. Wikipedia
is primarily an encyclopedia (although it also has
areas for discussion, and to describe its internal
processes), but wikis can support collaborative
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