Lecture 3: Publishing Online (WIKI)

INTRODUCTION

A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any
number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified
markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically
powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative wiki
websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in
corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems.
Wikis may exist to serve a specific purpose, and in such cases, users
use their editorial rights to remove material that is considered "off topic."
Such is the case of the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia. In contrast,
open purpose wikis accept content without firm rules as to how the
content should be organized.
"Wiki" is a Hawaiian word for "fast".

History

WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki. Ward Cunningham started

developing WikiWikiWeb in Portland, Oregon in 1994, and installed it
on the Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995. It was named by
Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter
employee telling him to take the "Wiki" shuttle bus that runs between the
airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an
alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff
quick-web."
On March 15, 2007, wiki entered the online Oxford English
Dictionary.

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 In the early 2000s, wikis were increasingly adopted in enterprise as
collaborative software. Common uses included project communication,
intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users. Today some
companies use wikis as their only collaborative software and as a
replacement for static intranets, and some schools and universities use
wikis to enhance group learning. There may be greater use of wikis
behind firewalls than on the public Internet.

Main Idea

The idea that wikis are websites collaboratively written by their

readers is simple enough, but the simplicity of the idea belies the
profound impact a wiki can have on the flow of information among
individuals. A wiki is to a typical website what a dialogue is to a
monologue. On the surface, a conversation shares a lot in common with a
lecture — in both cases, someone is talking and someone is listening, but
the experience of a conversation is qualitatively different from the
experience of either lecturing or being lectured, and the outcome of a
conversation is qualitatively different from the outcome of a lecture as
well.
In other words, authors are readers and readers are authors; there is
no approval process required to post information on a wiki and there is no
pre-ordained structure imposed on the content that is presented there. If
you think of a regular website as a farm, with all the content organized
into neat little rows of corn or beans, then a wiki is a meadow, teaming
with grasses and wild flowers. A meadow isn’t chaotic, however; there is
order there, but it is a different kind of order. It’s an emergent kind of
order, one that evolves and is discovered, rather than imposed. As with all
definitions, this definition is only partly true. As time has passed, the

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principle of openness has been reshaped as a consequence of the hard
realities of the world, and many wikis now restrict editing to certain
users. Wikis have now become so popular that there are quite a few
content management systems claiming wiki status with a completely
different set of features than those conceived by the father of wikis, Ward
Cunningham. He l aunched the first wiki (something he called a
WikiWikiWeb back then) on March 25, 1995. A host of content
management systems label themselves as wikis, even though they bear
only a minor resemblance to the original wiki concept. This can make
getting started with wikis a confusing affair.

Different Between Wiki and Blog

Blogs and wikis differ in where new content appears when

published, who can publish or edit content on the site, and where any
discussion about the content takes place. In a blog, posts appear in
reverse chronological order, and readers cannot change another person’s
posts, although they can comment on them. In contrast, contributors to a
wiki use a wiki application to enter content on a main page and discuss
the content of the main page on an associated discussion page. To add
content to a wiki, contributors access a common Web site that contains
documents and fi les that all members of the wiki can edit. Contributors
to a wiki typically have to register with the wiki to be able to make
changes to an article or to add their own thoughts to the discussion.
Unregistered readers of a wiki can review the discussion to understand
any issues that the contributors considered when creating the page,
although they cannot add comments to it.

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Characteristics

Ward Cunningham and co-author Bo Leuf, in their book The Wiki

Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web, described the essence of the Wiki
concept as follows:
1. A wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new
pages within the wiki Web site, using only a plain-vanilla
Web browser without any extra add-ons.
2. Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between
different pages by making page link creation almost
intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page
exists or not.
3. A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors.
Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process
of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web
site landscape.
4. A wiki enables communities to write documents
collaboratively, using a simple markup language and a web
browser. A single page in a wiki website is referred to as a
"wiki page", whiles the entire collection of pages, which are
usually well interconnected by hyperlinks, is "the wiki".
5. A wiki is essentially a database for creating, browsing, and
searching through information. A wiki allows for non-linear,
evolving, complex and networked text, argument and
interaction.
A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which
pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review before
modifications are accepted. Many wikis are open to alteration by the

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general public without requiring them to register user accounts.
Sometimes logging in for a session is recommended, to create a "wiki-
signature" cookie for signing edits automatically. Many edits, however,
can be made in real-time and appear almost instantly online. This can
facilitate abuse of the system. Private wiki servers require user
authentication to edit pages, and sometimes even to read them.
Boulous et al. write that it is the "openness of wikis that gives rise
to the concept of 'Darwikinism', which is a concept that describes the
'socially Darwinian process' that wiki pages are subject to. Basically,
because of the openness and rapidity that wiki pages can be edited, the
pages undergo an evolutionary selection process not unlike that which
nature subjects to living organisms. 'Unfit' sentences and sections are
ruthlessly culled, edited and replaced if they are not considered 'fit',
which hopefully results in the evolution of a higher quality and more
relevant page. Whilst such openness may invite 'vandalism' and the
posting of untrue information, this same openness also makes it possible
to rapidly correct or restore a 'quality' wiki page."

Wikipedia

All of the content found in Wikipedia, the successful online

encyclopedia, is generated by its contributors. Wikipedia depends upon
people coming together to contribute their expertise on a variety of
topics. Over time, the Wikipedia community established policies to guide
contributors who support the site by adding and reviewing its articles.
Wikipedia has experienced exponential growth since it began and is still
growing. In 2010, Wikipedia contained more than 3.1 million articles.
“Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a
free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on

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the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes
before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire
purpose of the community is precisely this goal.”
Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia
The English-language Wikipedia has the largest user base among
wikis on the World Wide Web and ranks in the top 10 among all Web
sites in terms of traffic. Other large wikis include the WikiWikiWeb,
Memory Alpha, Wikitravel, World66 and Susning.nu, a Swedish-
language knowledge base

From a Scholarly to a Collaborative Model

Britannica Online and Wikipedia

The Encyclopedia Britannica was originally published in 1768 as a

three-volume set, emerging from the intellectual churn of Edinburgh. It
grew quickly, reaching 21 volumes by 1801, and over the next two
centuries, it solidified its reputation as a comprehensive reference to the
world. Producing the printed tomes was a complex and expensive
enterprise, requiring editors to judge how long to leave an edition in print,
how much to change between editions, what new material to cover, and
who should cover it.
The possibility of an electronic edition was in many ways a relief at
first. The Encyclopedia Britannica took huge strides during the computer
revolution to survive a changing world. In the mid-1990s, the static book
publisher tried bundling an Encyclopedia Britannica CD with some PCs.
That experiment was short-lived, as it soon became obvious that any
publishing effort in the new digital age had to be dynamic. The company
then migrated its entire encyclopedia set to the Web, where it was free of

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many of the edition-by-edition obstacles to updating that had limited its
print and CD editions.
Although this was a daring move, and Britannica continues to sell
its content online, the model behind the encyclopedia’s creation now
faced a major challenge from newcomer Wikipedia. Whereas
Encyclopedia Britannica had relied upon experts and editors to create its
entries, Wikipedia threw the doors open to anyone who wanted to
contribute. While it seemed obvious to many that an encyclopedia created
by volunteer smany of them non-experts, many of them anonymous, and
some of them actually out to cause trouble—just had to be a terrible idea,
Wikipedia has thrived nonetheless.
Wikipedia was originally supposed to feed into a much more
formal, peer-reviewed Nupedia.
In Wikipedia, rather than one authority (typically a committee of
scholars) centrally defining all subjects and content, people all over the
world who are interested in a certain topic can collaborate
asynchronously to create a living, breathing work. Wikipedia combines
the collaborative aspects of wiki sites (websites that let visitors add,
remove, edit, and change content) with the presentation of authoritative
content built on rich hyperlinks between subjects to facilitate ultra-fast
cross-references of facts and claims.
Wikipedia does have editors, but everyone is welcome to edit.
Volunteers emerge over time, editing and re-editing articles that interest
them. Consistency and quality improve as more people participate,
though the content isn’t always perfect when first published. Anonymous
visitors often make edits to correct typos or other minor errors. Defending
the site against vandals (or just people with agendas) can be a challenge,
especially on controversial topics, but so far the site seems to have held
up. Wikipedia’s openness allows it to cover nearly anything, which has
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created some complications as editors deleted pages they didn’t consider
worthy of inclusion. It’s always a conversation.
The shift from a top-down editorial approach to a bottom-up
approach is a painful reversal for people who expect only expert advice
when they look up something—and perhaps an even harder reversal for
people who’ve built their careers on being experts or editors. Businesses
facing this kind of competition need to study whether their business
models are sustainable, and whether it is possible to incorporate the
bottom-up approach into their own work.

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