Information Management - Content
A wiki engine, being a form of a content management system, differs from other web-based systems such as blog software, in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little inherent structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users.
Wiki
What separates wikis from blogs and traditional content management systems is that wikis are inherently amorphous. The site's users create the content, define the relationships, and establish the links between the site's Web pages.
[EasyWikiHosting, p.1]
Wikis are especially useful for creating knowledge management portals. Within a company, a team of developers may maintain a wiki that includes information about ongoing development projects and their status, coding conventions, and tutorials for new hires on how to set up a baseline development environment.
[EasyWikiHosting, p.1]
A Wiki is a collaboratively created and iteratively improved set of web pages, together with the software that manages the web pages. Because of their unique way of creating and managing knowledge, Wikis combine the best elements of earlier conversational knowledge management technologies, while avoiding many of their disadvantages.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.265]
In conversational knowledge creation, individuals create and share knowledge through dialog with questions and answers.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.266]
The conversational model of knowledge creation is different from other models, where knowledge is for instance created through abstraction or aggregation of information, as in data or text mining. The conversational model of knowledge creation is different from other models, where knowledge is for instance created through abstraction or aggregation of information, as in data or text mining.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.266]
Conversational knowledge creation is suitable for environments where the knowledge is not centralized, but resides with multiple owners who may be located far apart.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.266]
A Wiki is described as a set of linked web pages (and the application enabling its development), created through the incremental development by a group of collaborating users.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.268]
As multi-user systems, Wikis allow any user to modify any other user’s web pages (unless specifically limited by access right settings). This property creates numerous challenges in version management. Wikis address these challenges by keeping prior versions of any web page in memory, and enabling rollback, comparison, difference identification, and similar functions, if so desired.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.274]
Wikis support a decentralized group of conversationalists, but
the technology infrastructure is designed to be centralized. Wikis use a common repository, i.e.,
database server, an application server that runs the Wiki software, and a web server that serves
the pages and facilitates the web-based interaction. Wikis are thus available anytime and
anyplace where there is web connectivity, and have a single common knowledge repository.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.277]
In a Wiki, if there is a mismatch between knowledge concepts and Wiki pages, it can be adjusted, either by breaking the content into multiple pages, or by combining multiple pages into one.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.277]
Since each concept is specific to one web page, its URI is unique, and therefore can be indexed and searched. As a result, knowledge concepts can be catalogued individually and found easily even by search engines incapable of full text search.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.277]
In a Wiki, the work product, the knowledge content in its iteratively improved form, is the focus of attention. This focus differs from other conversational technologies.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.278]
Wiki technology enables collaboration of people similar to open source software development, while at the same time minimizing the effort of content publication.
[WikiKMGroupCollaboration, p.286]
The differentiating factor of social software technologies is that users become publishers rather than merely consumers of information. That is, they are able to combine, annotate and edit existing material in such a way that new content is created and used in partnership with others.
[WikiStudentEngagement, p.141]
Tonkin, E. (2005). ‘Making the case for a wiki’, Ariadne, Issue 42, January, Retrieved 15 November 2007 from http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue42/tonkin/.
Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P., & Wheeler, D. (October 16 2008). The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating student‐generated content for collaborative learning. British journal of educational technology, 39(6), 987-995, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00799.x.
