Wikis

A wiki is a page or collection of pages which is accessable to the public for improving and adding on a given topic. This means that people can improve your peice of work without annoying you, having to be part of it or agreeing to everything. I tried looking up what wiki meant in my fairly old Oxford English Dictionary and found that it wasn't there, even thought it had been published a considerable amount of time since wikis were first created. I then found out that the word wiki entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2007, which explained its absence.

The first wiki ever created was by an American computer programmer called Howard G. 'Ward' Cunningham, who was born on 26th May, 1949 (picture on the left). He invented a wiki called WikiWikiWeb, or WardsWiki, used to exchange ideas easier for programmers. He also created FitWiki and WikiBase. However compared to WikiWikiWeb, these websites are nothing. FitWiki and WikiBase have 225 and 359 pages each respectively, whereas WikiWikiWeb has a staggering 33893 pages. If you are interested in finding out more about him, there is a wikipedia site on him here.

Possibly the most famous wiki is Wikipedia (comprised of the words wiki [meaning fast in Hawaiian] and encyclopaedia), which I admit use very often for homeworks, and when I'm just interested in something and want to find out something about it. It was first launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and now it is the most popular general reference work on the web. The official Wikipedia logo is pictured on the left. However there is a major issue of vandalism. Many people have managed to vandalise wikipedia. Fortunately, this doesn't last for long. I know this for a fact, because my friends have tried this and they have had their IP adresses blocked.

I find that wikis are extremely useful. I especially find wikipedia useful, as one can find almost anything there. Vandalism is being well-dealt with, and it is very good for acedemic use.