Wiki

From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change

A wiki is a type of website such as Wikipedia that lets anyone create and edit its pages. The word is Internet slang. The word Wiki is short for WikiWikiWeb. Wikiwiki is a word from Hawaiian, meaning "fast" or "speed". There are many wikis in the internet now, the best wikis are from the Wikimedia Foundation, which makes Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and other important wikis.

Every wiki can be changed, or edited by everyone, although some important pages cannot be changed by anyone. Wikis are central places where we all can share information with each other, people can add new information, and then people read them. Wikis allow information from all around the world to be collection.

In a wiki, people can write pages together. If one person writes something wrong, then the next person can correct it. The next person can also add something new to the page. Because of this, the page gets better whenever someone changes it. If someone writes information that is very obviously wrong, and the person actually wanted to vandalise, it would be changed by administraters, and the person will not be able to change the wiki anymore.

People can discuss there as well. Discussion can make people understand things better, or gives people a chance to tell their views. In Wikipedia the talk pages are for that, but in some wikis, the article and the discussion are in the same page.

Wikis can be used for different things and all wikis don't follow the same rules for using them. For example, the purpose of Wikipedia is to write articles, which form an encyclopedia. That's why in Wikipedia, people don't want to hear general discussion that doesn't help in writing articles.

Ward Cunningham started the first wiki in March 1995. Many people liked the place and wrote there, after which they started similar websites.