Wiki Wiki jitney at the Honolulu International Airport . range Credit : Andrew Laing viaWikimedia Commons//CC BY - SA 2.0
What did we do before Wikipedia ?
You might enquire this ( bantering ) question all the clock time , but wikis , or user - redact websites , are older than you might think — in fact , they ’re much the elder of the on-line world . Long before Twitter , Facebook , or even Google , a computer programmer created software system to serve colleagues partake info about their oeuvre . Since then , we ’ve used wikis to compile knowledge on Wikipedia , track election patterns , catalog fandom , keep cultures , andlaugh at ourselves . And unlike Netscape Navigator , Geocities , or Friendster , wikis have yet to become obsolete .
On March 25 , 1995 , a computer programmer constitute Ward Cunningham premiered what he call “ WikiWikiWeb ” on his website , c2.com . The “ wiki ” part was inspire by the Wiki Wiki Shuttle service at the Honolulu drome — wikiis the Hawaiian give-and-take for “ quick . ” The program was think of to help share knowledge about computer software design patterns among developer , and worked inside a drug user ’s web browser app . It also included build up - in edit tracking , which implied that article changes were worth preserving and discussing .
“ It ’s essentially a manner of committal to writing where you ’re take , ” CunninghamtoldNew Relic . “ On the Web before that , you would interpret something in one place but if you wanted to write more , you would have to go through a completely different mechanism . You could n’t author through the Web before that . ”
Ward Cunningham in 2011 . range citation : Matthew ( WMF ) viaWikimedia//CC BY - SA 3.0
PEOPLE, PROJECTS, AND PATTERNS
Ward ’s programme mean that with no knowledge of HTML necessary , just amarkup languagethat did arrange and linking for you , anyone could theoretically contribute to a torso of cognition for everyone else to learn from . Today , every pop societal medium political platform owes something to the leisurely “ what you see is what you get ” interface that wikis popularized .
The focus of WikiWikiWeb was , and is , what Cunningham called “ people , projects , and patterns”—patterns being replicable musical theme about software system design . “ Friends,”Cunningham wrotein a May 1 , 1995 , email , “ I ’ve always been concerned in the way programming ideas are bear by multitude as they move between task … I ’ve put together a unexampled database to give the labor [ of documenting idea about making program work ] another try . you’re able to help . ”
As soon as Cunningham released WikiBase , the software package underlie WikiWikiWeb , into the state of nature , wikis begin to evolve , branching out to cover any number of topics and biotic community . We have wikis to give thanks for sites as wide-ranging asTV Tropes , SourceWatch , and the comedy siteUncyclopedia . format has changed , organization has improved , and inherent programming language have grown , but the wiki has always been about egalitarian , lucid access code to information that anyone can retroflex and adapt .
That does n’t think of masses do n’t test to use wikis to further their own agendas . Wikipedia itself , which celebrates its sixteenth birthday today , January 15 , is full of logical argument about whose knowledge is the correct noesis . Sometimes users have cut Wikipedia entriesto harass , tospread sour selective information , to turn a profit , to eliminate evidence of wrongdoing , tochallenge the neutrality of the entryor , just , for the lulz . The Twitter account@congresseditstracks deepen from IP addresses inside the Congressional authority . Sometimes it sag politically relevant edits , from representative pages to issue - tie in entry . But other times , it ’s just about calling out government activity employee who should have better things to do than edit encyclopedia incoming like “ … Not ! ” and “ Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner . ”
The gender makeup of Wikipedia editor has also been acause of concern — they’re reportedly around 85 percent male , which affects what topic receive the most attention and deepness . Bias there matters in part because the site is so influential : it ’s thefifth most popularwebsite in the world . Wikipedia has more than 5 million clause in English , and version of the crowdsourced encyclopedia also live in about280 other words .
FROM “CONSENSUS ENGINE” TO “CHORUS OF VOICES”
However , Cunningham has a vision for his creation ’s future , and it ’s more like a web log connection than a single authoritative reference . He call it the small Federated Wiki . His destination , according to a2012WIREDinterview , is to put the ultimate control of the wiki in the hands of all its users , rather than one centralized hub .
At nowadays , all redact in a wiki take place on one page that everyone can work on , but it ’s the only available edition . Cunningham ’s federate wiki lets exploiter who wish to edit a Thomas Nelson Page “ fork ” it , copy the page into their own wiki database and update it there . He envisions a “ chorus of voices ” through groups of slightly different wiki copies ( others have calledthe current wiki model a “ consensus engine ” ) to encourage discussions about more immanent issues and opinions .
“ Is it too nerdy to watch on?”WIREDasks . Cunningham does n’t think so . “ The premise is that we wo n’t be creative , but Facebook turn up that everyone want to have their own Thomas Nelson Page , their own current , ” he told the magazine . In hypothesis , the most accurate article then rises to the top of the wad by being copied the most — it ’s a conversation , rather than an argument . Federated wikis could also help substance abuser search out a special perspective on a theme — perhaps one publish by someone with a background unlike from their own .
It ’s a compelling idea , but only time will tell if it ’s as popular as Cunningham ’s initial innovation of the wiki . you could listen to him describe how he develop the wiki , and where he see it belong in the hereafter , at his TEDxPortland 2012 talk of the town below .
