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Fred's Head is named after the legendary Fred Gissoni of APH's Customer Relations Department. Check out the bottom of this page for: Fred's Head on Twitter; receiving posts by email; browsing articles by subject; subscribing to RSS feeds; the archive of this blog; APH on YouTube; contributing articles to Fred's Head; and disclaimers.

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Friday, May 01, 2009

What is a Wiki?

No, you didn't give your friend a Wiki back in college! Readers in Hawaii know that "wiki-wiki" means "quick". In web-speak they are sites where users can add and edit content. If you've ever been to the Wikipedia for information then you have some idea about wikis.

Each page in a wiki usually contains a large number of links to other pages. Vandalism and spam attacks are frequent, but the administrator can usually revert to the previous version or astute users can correct the intrusion.

Many businesses and corporations are using wikis as a way to make collaboration easier. Information can be kept up-to-date without the need for emails to the webmaster or meetings. The changes can be instant-and the more people involved, the more that can be added.

Here are a few interesting wikis. Keep in mind that a wiki is only as good as its collaborators...

http://www.cookbookwiki.com/Main_Page
http://www.gardenguidewiki.com/Main_Page
http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page

Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers and operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Wikipedia began as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia on January 15, 2001. It has steadily risen in popularity, and has since spawned several sister projects, such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. It is edited by volunteers with wiki software, meaning articles are subject to change by nearly anyone. Wikipedia's volunteers attempt to uphold a policy of "neutral point of view" under which views presented by notable persons or literature are summarized without an attempt to determine an objective truth. Due to its open nature, vandalism and inaccuracy are constant problems in Wikipedia.

Wiktionary is a sister project to Wikipedia, intended to be a free wiki dictionary (including thesaurus and lexicon) in every language. It was set up on December 12, 2002.

Wikibooks is a collection of free textbooks, manuals, and other texts, with supporting book-based texts, that is written collaboratively on this website. The site is a wiki, meaning that anyone can edit any book module by clicking on an "edit this page" link which appears in every Wikibooks module.

Wikinews allows anyone to report news on a wide variety of subjects. Its mission, as stated on the main page, is to "create a diverse environment where citizen journalists can independently report the news on a wide variety of current events".

More Wikis

Looking for wikis?

Yet another way that the internet is bringing people together to share ideas and information.

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Posted by APH's Social Media Coordinator, Michael McCarty at 3:19 PM

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