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“The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. … There are many parts of the original dream which are not yet implemented. For example, very few people have an easy, intuitive tool for putting their thoughts into hypertext.”—Tim Berners-Lee. The first web client was a browser-editor. Since then, the web has evolved into a medium where a few publish and many browse. The purpose of wiki software is to make it as easy to edit pages as it is to browse them. It aims to do for collaboration what e-mail does for communication—open it up (which can be good and bad). A Wiki Wiki Web1 is an open-editing system where the emphasis is on the collaborative authoring of hyperlinked documents. The basic concept of a wiki is that anyone can edit any page. This blurs or erases the traditional distinction between publishing and reading. While at first this sounds like a recipe for anarchy, sites using this system have developed complex and rich communities for on-line collaboration and communication. Yes, it’s possible for someone to go and destroy everything on a page, but it doesn’t seem to happen often. And most wiki systems (including this one) have built-in mechanisms to secure selected pages and restore content that has been defaced or destroyed. This type of software is ideal when people in different organisations and locations are working together to create or share knowledge. It lets people respond immediately to proposed content and see one another’s contributions. Because it uses a browser and simple markup, people using different technology platforms can easily work together. The software is simple to set up and easy to customise for local conditions, so it can be used for short projects, such as the Tertiary Information Strategy?, as well as for permanent web page collections. All that’s required is a Unix or GNU/Linux web server that runs Php2. Affinity Limited set up this wiki as part of its role as facilitator of the strategy. The software’s power, scalability and ease of use have led people to use it to create and maintain some very sophisticated web sites. It is an example of Open Source Software?. 1 named after the Wiki Wiki Shuttle Bus—the Hawaiian word wiki means quick {:-) (↑) 2 other wiki flavours are available for Microsoft Windows servers (↑) |
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