Wikis

Wiki’s are a growing feature on the internet and in my opinion very soon every public website i.e. those that don’t require a password to enter them or a username or membership, will be wiki’s. However I do not think that it will work in the way that anyone can write on any website, I think they will still need permision from the originalcreator, but they will still be able to edit it without being the original creator, this is the case on websites like the BBC. But what actually is a wiki? The best and most famous example of a wiki is surprisingly “Wikipedia”. There are many sites like Wikipedia on the internet, sites that are also online encyclopaedias, but what makes Wikipedia unique? What makes Wikipedia successful? It is that fact that it is a wiki. You may have guessed now what a wiki is, but to put it in simpler terms, pretend a wiki is like an empty bottle, anyone on the web can reach this bottle and anyone can contribute to the bottle to make it fuller and fuller, so in essence a wiki is a webpage which anyone can comment on, or add information to. This means Wikipedia can be more up to date than any other website and can also have more accurate detailed information than any other website as experts can focus on their particular subject. Of course on huge sites like Wikipedia this is not strictly true, as you can not just say anything about anything, if something is obviously not true and is not sensible and it is posted on Wikipedia it is taken down within minutes. A brief history of wikis; they were created by Ward Cunningham who started to develop the first wiki site in 1994, “wikiwikiweb”. The name wiki came from when Cunningham was told on arrival in Honolulu airport to take the “wiki wiki” shuttle bus, the word “wiki-wiki” means quick, which is why he chose it instead of the name “quick-web”. Cunningham released his website onto the web on March 25, 1995, since then the idea to have a “wiki-website” has taken off. They are predominately used for websites that need constant quick updating, and on websites which serve a lot of people who need to get information across to people easily, e.g. company intranets.
Bibliography, ironically most of information came for Wikipedia.
Below is an excellant video showing how useful Wikis are