Professional Wikis

Chapter 1. Wikis at Work

Wikis are websites that are collaboratively written by their readers. The software that makes wikis possible is called a wiki engine. This chapter introduces the wiki concept, and what you read here will apply to almost any wiki engine. The rest of the book, however, is devoted to one wiki engine in particular called MediaWiki, the wiki engine that runs what is arguably the world's most famous wiki, Wikipedia.

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 ...