Wiki Whaa...? or Quicky! What's a Wiki?

The pace of change on the net continues unabated. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water along comes a new term to baffle you. Wiki Wiki - means quick in Hawaiian and a Wiki describes a blog-like web authoring technology whose principal use has been to allow collaboration between small (think a corporate project team) to large (think Wikipedia) groups of users.

Urban Dictionary (a cool, community-created slang dictionary slash wiki itself) defines a wiki as...

A collaborative Web site comprised of the perpetual collective work of many authors. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or modify content that has been placed on the Web site using a browser interface, including the work of previous authors. In contrast, a blog, typically authored by an individual, does not allow visitors to change the original posted material, only add comments to the original content. The term wiki refers to either the Web site or the software used to create the site. The first wiki was created by Ward Cunnigham in 1995...

One of the beauties of a wiki in a corporate environment is the ability to control document creep - you know - what happens when you email a document to more than one person, looking for revisions. The danger of getting out of synch is a factor of the number of documents sent times the size of the team. By using a wiki space as the central document repository you can avoid this problem.

If you want to see firsthand what a wiki is, i.e., build your own, check out pb wiki (pb for peanut butter cuz they think creating a wiki should be as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.).

pb wiki allows you to build and host your own free wiki much like blogger.com allows you to build and host your own free blog. Pretty simple stuff. Check out my wiki while you're over there. This took me about 15 minutes to build. It's nothing fancy, just a learning exercise at this point.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com