Simply put, a wiki is a type of website where its webpages can be viewed and modified by anybody with a Web browser and access to the Internet. A wiki allows people to quickly and easily develop content without any knowledge of any Web programming language.

What exactly is a wiki?

We're not the first to ask that question! Check out this short video:

As posted on YouTube by bobobluemonkey1

I hope that you picked "none of the above" from the above video. Here's another video that better describes what a wiki is!

As posted on YouTube by ramitsethi

Simply put, a wiki is a type of website where its webpages can be viewed and modified by anybody with a Web browser and access to the Internet. A wiki allows people to quickly and easily develop content without any knowledge of any Web programming language.

Here's a great video "Wikis in Plain English" by the Common Craft Show that explains the wiki concept:

As posted by Lee Lefever on YouTube on the Common Craft Show


A wiki typically has the following characteristics:

• allows anyone to add or edit pages
• is designed to be built by members of a community working together
• has a simple markup language for formatting text on the page or a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) text editor which does not require you to use any markup language
• saves previous versions of a page for easy recovery from errors
• supports hyperlinks, where information from other pages, or even other sites, may be viewed

Typically when you see an edit button on a web page, that web page is part of a wiki (even if it does not call itself a wiki). However, because of spammers and vandals, some wikis require their community members to register on the site in order to add or to edit pages.

For more information, read below how others describe wiki. Also, the Bemidji State University's site includes a collection of definitions pulled from numerous wikis.

How others describe wiki

• The ideas of ‘Wiki’ seem strange at first, but dive in and explore its links. ‘Wiki’ is a composition system; it’s a discussion medium; it’s a repository; it’s a mail system; it’s a tool for collaboration. Really, we don’t know quite what it is, but it’s a fun way of communicating asynchronously across the network. (from WikiWikiWeb)

• The simplest online database that could possibly work. (by Ward Cunningham and also in The Wiki Way, by Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham, on page 15)

• A wiki is a freely expandable collection of interlinked webpages, a hypertext system for storing and modifying information – a database, where each page is easily edited by any user with a forms-capable Web browser client (by Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham, from page 14 of their book The Wiki Way)

• There are people for whom, in the strictest of self-interest, Wiki Wiki is a learning place. For some it is a knowledge base. For others it is a forum for debate. All find something of value. (by Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham, from The Wiki Way on page 323)

• A “wiki” is a document that is collectively created and maintained. Anyone can edit it. This feature evokes a sense of responsibility and seriousness among most Internet surfers (sometimes this is too much for people). It’s a great means to utilize the Internet community, allowing users to build something useful for everyone. (from Sourceforge)

• A Wiki is a collaboratively-edited website which many people also view as an anarchistic publishing tool. The distinguishing feature of wikis is that they typically allow all users to edit any page, with full freedom to edit, change and delete the work of previous authors… (from UseModWiki)

• A Wiki is an online collaboration tool… (from OpenWiki)

• Wikis are made up of a collection of hyperlinked documents that can be collectively edited using a browser. (Stowe Boyd in Darwin Magazine)

• the post-it note of the web (the description of OpenWiki)

• Wikis facilitate collaboration, information dissemination and communal knowledge management in a free-form, yet structured way. (from the New Communications Forum wiki)

• Wiki is sometimes interpreted as the backronym for “What I know is”, which describes the knowledge contribution, storage and exchange function. (From Wikipedia’s definition)

• In many ways, wikis are the world’s simplest Web sites. (Rubenking’s article on “Wiki Tools” on PC Magazine in 2003)
• Wiki, a writable web: Communities can share content and organize it in a way most meaningful and useful to them (Peter Thoeny, WikiSym 2007)

• Ron Jeffries describes in the foreward to The Wiki Way his thoughts around a dialogue where Ward [Cunningham] asked, “What would you get if you had a Web site where anyone could edit or add anything?” Boredom, I guessed, or chaos. Boy, was I wrong. You get hundreds, thousands of pages full of information, ideas, conversations, learning, and teaching. You get linkages among ideas, conversations among people. You get a tool for business, a tool for people. You get copies and replicas all over the world. You get … the wiki” (From The Wiki Way by Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham, page xiii)