About Wikis and Three Wikispace Reviews

What is a Wiki?

Just what exactly is a wiki? We hear the term online all the time. Wikipedia, WikiEducator, WikiHow, Wikimedia Commons, they all have wiki in their name and that alludes to some specific characteristics of that project. Almost any subject/topic/idea or what have you, can be made into a wiki, whether its personal or business, a wiki can be made for anything. The general idea behind a wiki is a body of content that any users can edit and contribute to (Wiki, 2018); the capabilities that came along with web 2.0 us what makes wikis possible. It is collaboration and teamwork (Nations, 2018) that opens the door for everyone to share their knowledge and contribute to a larger, collective body of knowledge about whatever the wiki was created for. Businesses use them internally for projects, there are public wikis on the internet which probably the most well-known example is Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. It is as the name implies, it is probably the largest internet encyclopedia that anyone can edit, create, and collaborate on content. Just to give you an idea of how large Wikipedia is, in the English language alone, there are 5,801,997 articles (Wikipedia, n.d.).

How does it fit into Web 2.0?

As we have been coming to learn, web 2.0 is built upon the technologies that enable creating, sharing and linking content and being able to keep it all in real-time and the only thing you should need to accomplish this is a browser. The pages can be updated dynamically when a specific element changes as opposed to reloading the entire page. This ability along with others enables the creation of RIA’s, community created and maintained body of knowledge, as well as social interaction on a whole level beyond simple text messages. User generated content is one of the main constituents of web 2.0 applications and web 2.0 provides the level of interaction and capabilities needed for a wiki to operate functionally. One of the advantages I feel of web 2.0 and its applications (wikis included) is that it enables very different sets of eyes to work on a project providing a range of input. For example, web 2.0 enables people from very different backgrounds and perspectives to contribute instead of one general demographic which proves very helpful in taking a look through someone else’s viewpoint, it aids in future decision making.

A Few Quick Wikispace Reviews

Weebly for Education, which can be found @ https://education.weebly.com/ is a wikispace for creating classroom websites; the teacher can create a classroom website and the students can create their own websites too or you can make websites for projects (Weebly, n.d.). You can drag-n-drop anything into the website template e.g. audio, video, pictures etc. (Weebly, n.d.). It also has blogging features, no ads, lots of templates and more (Weebly, n.d.).

MediaWiki @ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki is a wiki about the software that is used behind the scenes to create wikis (MediaWiki, 2018). Similar to the template for example, the software used to create that format for the wiki. Essentially, it is a wiki for a particular project with that project being the software used to create the wikis and nothing to do with being an online encyclopedia.

WikiDot @ https://www.wikidot.com/ is a very useful website that lets you create a wiki and they host the wiki (WikiDot, n.d.). You can create, publish and edit your content on your wiki and so can the community or whoever you allow to (WikiDot, n.d.). There is collaboration, document and file sharing and some other useful features. It is a very full list and I would recommend you to look over their features page if you are thinking of creating a wiki.

References

MediaWiki. (2018). Project: About. Retrieved from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:About

Nations, D. (2018). What is a Wiki? Retrieved from https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-wiki-3486702

Weebly. (n.d.). Our features. Retrieved from https://education.weebly.com/ed-features.php

Wiki. (2008). What is a wiki? Retrieved from http://www.wiki.com/whatiswiki.htm

WikiDot. (n.d.). Awesome features. Retrieved from https://www.wikidot.com/features

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page