Is WordonWiki a wiki?
March 8th, 2010
The original article of Ward Cunningham defines a wiki as "The simplest online database that could possibly work.". There is also a longer version that goes as follows:
Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users
to freely
create and edit Web page content using any Web browser.
Wiki supports
hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax
for creating new pages and
crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.
Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that
it allows the organization
of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.
Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle
effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any
page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of
the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users.
We've read with interest this definition and verified if we could match WordonWiki to this definition. For the simple definition we could match that definition certainly. As indicated in previous posts, this software was developed out of a personal need. Textile or wysiwyg wikis simply did 'not work' for we wanted it to do.
The longer definition is more explicit. All things like on the fly creation of pages and links between pages are well supported by WordonWiki. We're not sure how to read the requirement of a 'page revision history' in the definition, but this is 'de rigeur' in today's wiki systems.
Where WordonWiki deviates from the pure form of the definition, is the 'edit Web page content using any Web browser' requirement. While WordonWiki certainly supports easy editing, it does not use 'the browser' for the editing process. Rather it uses the browser to trigger the editing process.
Purists have told us that we don't qualify as a pure wiki, exactly for this reason. However, we have argued that other wiki's also would not fit. There are a number of features that today are taken for granted, but that would disqualify a wiki taking this strict definition into account:
- Login required for read or edit
- Page templates
- File attachments
The truth is that this definition which dates back to 1994 is, while visionary and extremely helpfull to define the concept of a wiki, currently a bit outdated. We need to go beyond the original definition and look what makes the wikis of today work:
- Create content that is easy to navigate and edit by all its authorized users.
- Edits can always be reverted.
- It is easy to create new pages and create links between pages.
There is no direct reason a wiki should be accessible through a browser, however as long as we don't have any other universal access, we need to stick to it. This is where we augment the rich editing feature of the standalone Microsoft Word document. Even when it is kept inside a sharepoint installation, it is impossible for anyone to know where the 'real' source of the page is kept. A confusion that is not even existing in a wiki as its page is equal to its location is equal to its content and is equal to its full revision.
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