Enter the World of the "Wiki"

By Chris Hayes

Chris Hayes is CEO of CourtEXPRESS, a national and international court access and document retrieval service using leading-edge Internet and telecommunications technologies.

Published July 26, 2004 at LRRX

Introduction

One of the hottest new concepts in the world of geeks and nerds is wiki software. You may not have run into a wiki website yet, but, no doubt, one day soon you will. They’ve been in use in the programming community for a number of years, and they are now becoming popular among companies as an in-house extranet application. Even BusinessWeek magazine touted the popularity of the wiki in a recent issue. (See Wiki World: Not Just for Geeks Anymore, and Wiki's Winning Ways, June 7, 2004.)

Wikies are fun and informative, but it is helpful to have a little understanding of them before you have to work with one. The following overview should get you started.

What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a web-based discussion site that grows and changes at the will of the participants. People can add and edit pages at will, using a Word-like screen, without knowing any programming or HTML commands. More specifically, a wiki is composed of web pages where people input information and then create hyperlinks to another or new pages for more details about a particular topic. Anyone—yes, anyone—can edit any page and add, delete or correct information. A search field at the bottom of the page lets you enter a keyword for the information you wants to find.