Wiki

The term wiki (a word that comes from the Hawaiian wiki, 'quick') alludes to the name that receives a virtual community, whose pages are edited directly from the browser, where the same users create, modify, correct or delete content that they usually share. It does not necessarily have to be a web site, since there are wikis installable for use on a desktop or personal computer or that can be carried on a USB key that carry a LAMP environment such as, e.g. XAMPP.^{[citation required]}

Texts or wiki pages have unique titles. If you write the title of a wiki page somewhere on the wiki between double brackets ([[Page Title]]), this word becomes a "web link" to the corresponding page. Thus, on a page about "climbing" there might be a word like "ice ax" or "compass" that is marked as a word belonging to a wiki page title. Most of the implementations of wikis indicate in the uniform resource locator (URL) of the page the title of the wiki page itself (in Wikipedia, it happens like this: <https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaineering> is the URL of the page wiki Mountaineering), which facilitates the use and general application of the link outside of the website itself. In addition, this allows for terminological coherence on many occasions, and generates a natural ordering of the content.^{[citation required]}

His latest task, to which he owes his fame up to now, has been the creation of collective encyclopedias, a genre to which Wikipedia belongs. There are many other applications closer to the coordination of information and actions, or the sharing of knowledge or texts within groups. Most of today's wikis maintain a change history that allows you to easily retrieve any previous state and see which user made each change, making it easier to maintain together and control bad users. Usually, without the need for a prior review, the content displayed by the edited wiki page is updated.^{[citation required]}

History

The Wiki Wiki Shuttle at Honolulu International Airport

The first WikiWikiWeb was created by Ward Cunningham, who invented and named the wiki concept, and produced the first implementation of a WikiWiki server for the pattern repository of the Portland (Portland Pattern Repository) in 1995. In Cunningham's own words, a wiki is "the simplest online database that could possibly work". ).^{[citation required]}

In January 2001, the founders of the Nupedia encyclopedia project, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, decided to use a wiki as the basis for the Wikipedia encyclopedia project. Originally the UseMod software was used, but they later created their own software, MediaWiki, which has since been adopted by many other wikis.

The largest wiki in existence is the English version of Wikipedia, followed by several other versions of the project. Non-Wikipedia wikis are much smaller with less user participation, generally due to being much more specialized.

Features

This is a type of web page that offers the possibility for a multitude of users to edit their contents through the browser, with certain minimum restrictions. In this way, it allows multiple authors to create, modify or delete the contents. Each user who makes a change can be identified and the modified contents can be recovered, returning to a previous state. These characteristics facilitate collaborative work as well as the coordination of actions and exchange of information without the need to be physically present or connected simultaneously. The best known and largest example of this type of web page is the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org). In favor: It is a source of information and bibliography of collective construction. Problems: The information published may come from erroneous or invalid sources. Solution/recommendations: It is advisable to work on criteria on the use of reliable sources of information and ways to validate the contents.

A wiki allows articles to be written collectively (co-authored) using a wikitext language edited by a browser. A single wiki page is called the wiki page, while the set of pages (usually linked by hyperlinks) is called the wiki. It is much simpler and easier to use than a database.

A defining feature of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. In general, no revision is necessary for the changes to be accepted. Most wikis are open to the public without the need to register a user account. Sometimes it is required to connect to obtain a "wiki-signature" cookie, to self-sign one's own editions. Other more private wikis require user authentication.

Pedagogical Perspectives

For what has been explained, wikis are a very good pedagogical option for carrying out educational activities, since, as Mariana Maggio explains, proposals can be generated that students can integrate into the wikis from their reconstruction in a didactic sense. At present, web documents, such as the wikis example, create trends and when these configure the uses of children and young people, it is important that educators recognize them and care to understand them. from your exploration.

For Maggio, «a wonderful didactic project can be, when the topic justifies it, generating content for Wikipedia or reviewing those published there: understanding the topic in a deep way, verifying the content, making the criteria transparent and discussing, expanding what published, offer versions and specifications of high local value.”

A wiki can also be a space used for individual monitoring of students, where they can create their projects independently and the teacher can intervene guiding and correcting. It has also been used in teacher training processes, helping to improve their technological skills, but also in peer collaboration processes. Allows the collective creation of documents in a simple markup language using a web browser. Pre-reviews are generally not done before changes are accepted, and most wikis are open. It allows participants to work together on web pages, to add or modify their content. Old versions are never deleted and can be restored. You can select different types of wiki, teacher, group, student.

Pages and editing

In a traditional wiki, there are three representations for each page:

• The "source code" that users can edit. It is the format stored locally on the server. Normally it is plain text, it is only visible to the user when the "Edit" operation shows it.
• A template (sometimes internally generated) that defines the layout and common elements of all pages.
• The HTML code, put in real time by the server from the source code whenever the page is requested.

The source code is powered by a simplified markup language to make various visual and structural conventions. For example, the use of the asterisk "*" at the beginning of a line of text means that an unordered list of elements (bullet-list) will be generated. The style and syntax can vary depending on the implementation, some of which also allow HTML tags.

Why not HTML?

The reason for this design is that HTML, with many of its cryptic tags, is difficult to read for non-tech users. Making HTML tags visible makes the text itself difficult to read and edit for most users. Therefore, the use of plain text editing with easy-to-understand conventions for structure and style is encouraged.

Sometimes it is desirable that users not be able to use certain functionality that HTML allows, such as JavaScript, CSS and XML. Consistency in the visualization is achieved, as well as additional security for the user. In many wiki embeds, a hyperlink is exactly as shown, as opposed to HTML.

Standard

For years the de facto standard was the original WikiWikiWeb syntax. Currently the formatting instructions are different depending on the wiki engine. Simple wikis allow only basic text formatting, while more complex ones have support for tables, images, formulas, and even other more interactive elements such as polls and games. Due to the difficulty of using various syntaxes, efforts are being made to define a markup standard (see efforts by Meatball and Tikiwiki).

Link and create pages

Wikis are a true hypertext medium, with non-linear navigation structures. Each page contains a large number of links to other pages. Hierarchical navigation pages exist on large wikis, usually as a consequence of the original creation process, but it is not necessary to use them. Links are used with a specific syntax, the "link pattern".

Camel Case

Originally, most wikis used CamelCase as a link pattern, putting sentences without spaces and capitalizing the first letter of each word (for example, the word "CamelCase"). This method is very easy, but it causes hyperlinks to be written in a way that deviates from standard writing. CamelCase-based wikis are instantly distinguishable by links with names like: “TableOfContents”, “FAQs”. Consequently, other solutions began to be developed.

Free links

Free links, first used by CLiki, use a _(link) format. For example, _(Table of Contents), _(Frequently Asked Questions). Other wiki engines use different punctuation marks.

Interwiki

Interwiki allows links between different wiki communities. New pages are created simply by creating an appropriate link. If the link does not exist, it is customary to highlight it as "broken link". Following the link opens an edit page, which allows the user to enter text for the new wiki page. This mechanism ensures that almost no orphan pages (ie pages that have no links pointing to them) are generated. In addition, a high level of connectivity is maintained.

Search

Most wikis allow at least a title search, sometimes even a full text search. The scalability of the search depends entirely on whether the wiki engine has a database or not: access to an indexed database is necessary to do fast searches large wikis. On Wikipedia, the "Go" button allows readers to go directly to a page that matches the search criteria. The MetaWiki engine was created to enable searching across multiple wikis.

Track Changes

Wikis wikis are often designed with the philosophy of making mistakes easier to fix, rather than making them less difficult. wikis are very open, but even so they provide ways to check the validity of the latest changes to page content. On almost every wiki there is a specific page, "Recent Changes", which lists the most recent editions of articles, or a list of changes made over a period of time. Some wikis may filter the list to undo changes made by vandalism.

From the changelog there are usually other features: the "revision history" shows previous versions of the page, and the "diff" feature highlights changes between two revisions. Using the history, an editor can view and restore a previous version of the article, and the "diff" feature can be used to decide when that is necessary. A normal user of the wiki can see the diff of an edit listed in "Recent Changes" and, if it is an unacceptable edit, check the history and restore a previous version. This process is more or less complicated, depending on the software that uses the wiki.

Should unacceptable edits be overlooked in "Recent Changes", some wiki engines provide additional content control. They can be monitored to ensure that a page or set of pages maintains quality. A user willing to maintain those pages will be notified in case of modifications, thus allowing him to quickly verify the validity of the new editions.

Vandalism

It consists of making edits (usually made by unknown or malicious people) that delete important content, introduce errors, add inappropriate or offensive content (for example, insults) or simply flagrantly violate the rules of the wiki. Spam attempts are also frequent, for example:

• The introduction of links in a wiki in order to get on the Internet search engines (see PageRank).
• The attempts to publicize or make proselytism (of its ideology, religion or others) through wiki.
• Enter material that violates copyright.
• Enter inappropriate content for minors.

Some solutions that are used to fight against vandalism are:

• Quickly reverse your changes, so they get discouraged.
• temporarily block them by their username or IP address, so they can't continue editing. This solution is hampered by dynamic IPs and the use of open proxies, which, when blocked, can also affect innocent people.
• If it always occurs on the same page, the protection of that page.
• Do not allow them to edit user pages that are not registered in the wiki.
• In extreme cases (usually, attacks by automatic tools), block the database of the wikiwithout allowing any kind of editing.

Software

There are various programs, usually server scripts in Perl or PHP, that implement a wiki. They often use a database, such as MySQL.

They are usually distinguished by:

• Destination: for personal use, for intranets, for the web, etc.
• Functionality: they may or may not maintain history, have security options, allow uploading files, having WYSIWYG visual editors, etc.

Some of the most used are:

• UseModWiki: the oldest, written in Perl.
• MediaWiki: used in all Wikimedia projects. Based on PHP and MySQL.
• PhpWiki: based on UseMod. Written in PHP, you can use different databases.
• TikiWiki: Full CMS, with a wiki very developed, using PHP and MySQL.
• DokuWiki: a wiki complete written in PHP without the need for databases (use only text files).
• WikkaWiki: based on WakkaWiki, a wiki Very light. Use PHP and MySQL.
• MoinMoin: modular, written in Python.
• OpenWiking: wiki programmed in ASP.
• Swiki: wiki programmed in Squeak.

Utilities

• Searches can be made in several wikis at the same time, even on this website and Ward, using a MetaWiki.
• La wiki It is an innovative practice that has expanded its use, for example, to the companies, which use this means so that the knowledge acquired by the workers can be shared and complemented by all, is used as a tool that favors innovation.