(Ita) Nuvole di cambiamento

Tuesday April 10th, 2012

A wiki is a website whose users can add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor.^[1][2][3] Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include community websites, corporate intranets, knowledge management systems, and notetaking.

Wikis may serve many different purposes. Some permit control over different functions (levels of access). For example, editing rights may permit changing, adding or removing material. Others may permit access without enforcing access control. Other rules may also be imposed for organizing content.

WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki.^[6] Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in Portland, Oregon, in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com ^[7] on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the “Wiki 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.”^[8][9]

Cunningham was in part inspired by Apple’s HyperCard. Apple had designed a system allowing users to create virtual “card stacks” supporting links among the various cards. Cunningham developed Vannevar Bush’s ideas by allowing users to “comment on and change one another’s text.”^[2][10]

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.

On March 15, 2007, wiki entered the online Oxford English Dictionary.^[11]