What Is a Wiki?

You’ve probably used a wiki to settle a debate, but what exactly is a wiki? For instance, Wikipedia is one of the most well-known wiki sites, serving as an enormous online encyclopedia. With more than six million articles, it’s a frequent result on Google [source: Wikipedia].

Wikis are gaining popularity because they are some of the easiest online database platforms. A wiki page allows users to collaboratively add and edit text. These edits can be viewed and modified by anyone who accesses the wiki.

That’s all there is to it. When you visit a wiki, you gain access to all the knowledge that the wiki’s community has contributed. By clicking the ‘edit’ button on an article, you can also modify its content, adding or changing whatever you like in the article you're viewing.

The simplicity and openness of wikis often lead many people to quickly dismiss the concept. Many find wikis strange. Where does the information come from? Is it trustworthy? What prevents people from vandalizing the content until it's ruined? People assume that because anyone can edit a wiki, it must be unreliable. However, advocates of wikis argue that this assumption is incorrect. Let’s explore an actual wiki to better understand how it works.

Getting to Know Wikipedia

As Wikipedia is the largest and most widely used wiki worldwide, we will use it as a practical example to understand how wikis operate.

If you visit Wikipedia.org and look at the homepage, you'll see a welcome message that explains how to explore different versions of Wikipedia, along with a search bar.

Enter "wing warping" into the search bar, and you’ll be directed to a standard Wikipedia article. The "wing warping" page provides a summary of the concept, along with links to related Wikipedia articles and a few external resources.

This is typical for any wiki—a wiki is essentially a network of web pages connected through internal links. In the English version of Wikipedia alone, there are more than a million pages like this.

By reading the article, you will discover that it is a valuable resource. It provides a clear explanation of wing warping and points you to additional references. Despite the fact that anyone, including you, can edit the page, there is no inappropriate content like pornography, profanity, or hate speech. All the material remains entirely relevant to the subject.

Now, let’s address the crucial question when discussing wikis — where did the wing warping page come from? Who authored it? With a traditional encyclopedia, the answer is straightforward — the article was written by a paid contributor. However, with Wikipedia, the situation is entirely different.

The Creation of Wikipedia Pages

At the top of the "Wing warping" page on Wikipedia, there’s a tab labeled "edit this page." This serves as an open invitation to anyone—every visitor to Wikipedia (including you)—to edit any page. If you have additional information about wing warping that should be included, or an external link you believe could help others exploring the topic, or even if you want to add something unrelated, you can do so by clicking the "Edit this page" tab and adding your input.

For many people who have never engaged with an active wiki before, this concept is unsettling. The idea that anyone can freely come to Wikipedia and edit any page at any time, doing so anonymously, is troubling. This prompts several obvious questions.

While these issues do occur, they are relatively uncommon. What ensures a wiki's functionality is its community. Using various tools, the community makes sure that vandals, trolls, and spammers do not ruin the content of the encyclopedia.

Wiki Communities

The core of any wiki site is its community. Millions of people visit Wikipedia each month, and collectively they form its community. Every individual who visits has the opportunity to contribute in various ways. For example:

In addition to sharing knowledge, writers, editors, and admins collaborate to address challenges commonly encountered on an open platform like Wikipedia. They also join forces to produce well-researched and thorough articles.

The most effective way to grasp how the community-driven wiki system functions is to contribute to Wikipedia and observe the results firsthand.

Experiment: Modifying a Page

The best way to grasp how a wiki community operates is by engaging with a site like Wikipedia and making a contribution. Here's an experiment for you to try:

What will happen is that the Wikipedia community will respond to your modification. If the community agrees with your change, it might remain untouched. However, if your contribution is incorrect or vandalistic, it will likely be removed. If you make small mistakes (like typos), chances are someone will correct them. Similarly, if you format your text wrongly or use an inappropriate tone, someone will adjust it. In essence, your changes will be accepted, modified, or rejected by the community. This ongoing process leads to constant evolution and improvement of Wikipedia pages.

How did the community know about your change? Many wikis offer tools that allow the community to track edits and see what is being altered.

After submitting your changes, take a look at the tabs at the top of the article and click on "History." You will see that your addition, along with your IP address (if you made the edit anonymously), has been logged in the system. In other words, each Wikipedia page has a revision history that anyone can access.

A compilation of all edited pages is available on the recent changes page. This page can be visited by anyone at any time to view all ongoing changes within Wikipedia.

On large wiki platforms like Wikipedia, the recent changes page can be quite overwhelming. Thousands of pages are updated daily, and during peak times, there can be as many as 50 or more pages being edited every minute. For more personal tracking, Wikipedia offers a feature called a watchlist. Here's how it works:

Imagine you create a new article or make some changes to an existing one on Wikipedia. Once you make these edits, you might feel some connection to the page and want to monitor any subsequent changes. By adding that page to your watchlist, you will receive notifications whenever it is updated.

This explains why any change you make won't go unnoticed for long. Once you edit a page, many members of the Wikipedia community will see your work. Some of them may feel strongly about the page and, if they disagree with your edits, will either undo or modify them. Others may approve of your changes and either leave them as they are or further enhance them.

The success of a wiki hinges on its community. It is the people who contribute the content, edit it, and ensure its quality. When the community works efficiently, it generates vast amounts of content that continuously improves over time. If you wish, you can join the Wikipedia community or any other wiki community, contributing as a writer or editor. To get started, refer to the Wikipedia FAQ, particularly the Contributing FAQ, where you can familiarize yourself with the editing tools and guidelines of Wikipedia.

Vandalism on Wikipedia is a simple task for anyone with access. Because anyone can edit any page, there’s always a chance for misuse. A vandal might insert inappropriate language or images, erase all content from a page, or carry out other disruptive actions.

As demonstrated in the previous section, there are tools that assist the community in identifying and removing vandalism. Wikipedia also provides additional work management tools to handle users who cause persistent damage. For instance:

With these tools, the community can swiftly eliminate vandalism and prevent offenders from returning to make further disruptions.

A subtler form of vandalism, known as an "edit war," can also take place on a wiki. In an edit war, two or more individuals repeatedly edit or revert a page to push their own perspective.

Edit wars can occur on any wiki, but on a large platform like Wikipedia, they can become particularly intense. To understand the dynamics of an edit war, one need only examine a battleground page — such as the Wikipedia entry on George W. Bush, for example [source: Wikipedia].

It’s easy to understand why the George W. Bush page could become a battleground. There are countless people who support George W. Bush, and just as many who strongly oppose him. Supporters tend to highlight aspects of his life and actions that align with their positive view of him, while his detractors focus on the opposite. As a result, the article may be edited and re-edited by dozens of people to reflect their personal perspectives on the matter.

What’s fascinating about this edit war is that, with a subject as controversial as this, it’s completely expected. Both sides have their own viewpoints, and these perspectives are naturally at odds with each other. The outcome, however, is quite telling, and it’s visible when you examine the George W. Bush page.

In the end, both sides must come to an agreement about the content of the page, which leads to a version that reflects neutrality and fairness that both sides can accept. For particularly contentious issues, like Bush’s National Guard service, separate pages are often created so those topics can be handled on their own. Overall, the process of balancing the perspectives works.

Various Topics, Numerous Wikis

There are now thousands of wikis scattered across the internet. As a genre, wikis are expanding at a rapid pace. Here are just a few examples:

Almost any subject with an active community can support a wiki. However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all wikis are created equally. A wiki provides a way for the community to collect and update information as things evolve.

Because of this, wikis have become increasingly common in corporations and organizations. Imagine the following scenario: A large company uses a custom-built software application to manage its accounts. Two thousand people in the company use the program to input and access data. The program is 25 years old, poorly documented, and extremely frustrating to use. Training is informal and happens through word of mouth.

This kind of setting is perfect for a wiki. The 2,000 users of the program can gradually build their own documentation. Whenever someone discovers something new, they can add a brief note to the wiki to help others understand how to use that feature. Over time, the entire user base will collectively create comprehensive documentation for the entire application.

It’s highly likely that wikis and other community-driven initiatives will continue to grow as more people become familiar with and comfortable using the concept.