How do wikis differ from other collaboration tools?

A wiki is a type of website that allows anyone who can basically use a word processor or send e-mail to develop or to edit content on a website, with no special tools or programming knowledge. Wikis facilitate collaboration among community members, who are often a dedicated group of people fairly focused on the site content. Visitors are encouraged to edit content posted by other users' contributions and to create new pages to improve the content of the site.

In this new collaborative environment, you may ask how a wiki differs from a blog. Here's a humorous video of a fictional debate between JFK and Nixon about wikis and blogs:


Numerous collaboration tools have preceded wikis and some of their differences are noted below.

• Mailing list
  Mailing lists are suitable for announcements or events. Individuals may subscribe to mailing lists in order to be informed immediately of announcements. Subscribers receive an e-mail about the announcement, but can only reply by e-mail and cannot discuss the announcement or even refine the announcement content with other subscribers, as can be done on an "Announcements" page on a wiki. Some wikis permit users to subscribe to content updates, for the overall site or by page. Notifications can be received by e-mail, telephone call, or using instant messaging on some wiki farms. Also, information about updates may also be managed through RSS feeds.
• Newsgroups
  Newsgroups also have subscribers. However, it is difficult to structure information using a newsgroup. They typically support a thread mode for managing discussions. Users may only append comments, where wikis allow you to edit anything, even prior postings.
• Discussion forums
  Also known as online bulletin boards or Internet forums, the discussion forums are asynchronous tools to facilitate group discussions. They automatically maintain a log of all messages in a threaded, hierarchical structure. Users find a topic of interest, read the postings under it, and enter a response. Users may comment on postings of others on the forums, but wiki users may actually update the postings of other users.
• Online chat
  Online chat is one example of a synchronous tool used for real-time communications. Communication may occur in chat rooms or by instant messaging between individuals or between groups. The speed of instant messaging results in spontaneous messages that are more similar to spoken exchanges than the communications in discussion forums. Transcripts of these chat sessions may be available on some systems, but not all. Many services offer a "presence information" feature indicating whether people in one's list of contacts are currently online and available to chat. Many also allow one to set a status message. Unlike chat rooms, wiki content has an expected degree of permanence. Wiki sites may be created for specific projects with a set group of allowed users for collaborating or may be open to the public.
• Web logs or blogs
  Web logs, or blogs, are chronological online journals to which readers may post comments. Many blogs appear to be online personal diaries. Primarily, blogs are written by an individual, although some group blogs exist. Like bulletin boards, most blogs enable visitors to make comments about the content. People read others' blogs to see what is going on and they often add value by linking, commenting, or elaborating on what is being said on the blog. However, once a blog addition is posted, it often cannot be edited, unlike with wikis. Writers typically use hypertext links to connect to what others have written on a topic or to refer to other resources on the Web. Blogs are easily linked and cross-linked to create larger, online communities. No knowledge of Web authoring or HTML is needed and blogs tend to use a modified WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editing environment, but wikis often use a simple set of formatting commands, often referenced as markup text or wikitext. A disadvantage of using markup is the lack of standardization across the various wiki software implementations. Blogs can be used in collaborative projects. One limitation is that they are organized chronologically, not by the content. However, indices may be created for blog content and a search mechanism is often provided. Blogs are often described as more 'personal' where wikis are more collaborative. Also, blogs are frequently used to express opinion and many wikis strive for a NPOV (neutral point of view) on content. Blogs typically use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to alert users to new content; wikis usually use e-mail notifications but RSS feeds may also be used with some. Here's a link to a summary of the differences in wikis and blogs.
• Groupware systems
  Groupware systems are described as "industrial-strength solutions with many collaborative features for corporate needs, but they cost." (from The Wiki Way, p. 12, by Ward and Leuf). These systems cost hard disk space, money, memory, upgrades, and time to learn how to use them effectively. They also require other tools for Web space creation and maintenance, net-conferencing connectivity, and document creation. In contrast, Wiki is a "light" solution, a simplistic solution with a surprising amount of functionality for the size of the wiki source code and its general low overhead (e.g., a perl package and a Web browser).

For more information:
Wikis are one form of social software. Visit the Social Software Timeline for more information about the development of these collaboration tools