Wiki - Stage One Wiki

A wiki is a web page able to be contributed to and edited by many users, as such it is a collaborative system. An interesting article on the background of how a wiki works can be found at http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wiki.htm.

The Usefulness of Wiki

Wiki's are useful for cataloguing information on many different topics (such as Wikipedia[1]) or information on a specific topic (such as Narutopedia[2]). Anyone can edit a wiki, which has advantages and disadvantages. An advantage of this is that someone who finds a wiki page whcih is lacking in information and who has knowledge on this subject can add to the page, increasing its usefulness to the general public. A disadvantage of this is that people can edit in wrong information or offensive comments, so called 'page vandalism'. Due to this wiki's a rarely seen as a useful source of information for scholarly work.

What is a wiki..?

A wiki is a system that permits users to generate and edit web pages. The contents of a wiki page can be edited by anyone - this allows the adding of useful information or improving or correcting of the content of a page already created by someone else. Wiki is designed to be easy to use and available to everyone, therefore providing the opportunity for anyone who wants to present information.

Edit Wars

When people create or modify an article, they can become quite possessive about the content, and when an article is edited, previous contributors/creators can be automatically alerted to any changes, and have the option of "reverting" the article to a previous version. This can set up what is known as an edit war (or revert war), where an article is repeatedly edited/reverted between two versions.

There is an amusing subsection on edit wars here, with a link through to a Wikipedia article on "Lame edit wars".

One example of notable relevance to New Zealanders is a long running edit war on the origins of the pavlova: "which was invented in Australia 4, New Zealand 5, Australia 6, 7, 8, New Zealand 9"

This page was last modified 09:30, 12 August 2009.

Options
Log in

Search