Never Used a Wiki?

The idea of 'Wiki' seems strange at first, but dive in and explore its links. 'Wiki' is a composition system; it's a discussion medium; it's a repository; it's a mail system; it's a tool for collaboration; it's a way of communicating asynchronously across the network. A Wiki is a web site where anyone can edit the pages through an HTML form. Linking is done automatically on the server side; all pages are stored in a database. This sounds simplistic, but a Wiki is a very unique way to collaborate on the Web. The addictive quality of a Wiki is that making pages is as simple as making a link to them. If the new page doesn't yet exist, the page link will have a question mark in its name; follow that link and you can define the new page. With this setup, you can update and create pages from anywhere there is a web browser handy.

For the reader who is accessing a wiki to find resources or gain understanding, there is no longer an excuse to think, "They should have said it this way" or "Why didn't they talk about xxx on the page?" Instead, drop to the bottom of the page and poke the EditText button!

It's good to separate in your mind a Wiki host program compared to the implementation of a wiki program. The phpwiki host program (which you're using at this site) is one of many distributed by various development teams. In contrast, each implementation takes on content and character as it grows. If you want to see two mature implementations of a wik, visit the grand-daddy of all wikis at http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?WikiWikiWeb, and the largest international reference encyclopedia Wiki at http://www.wikipedia.org. What this wiki becomes is dependent on you and other users :-)