What is next in the future of wiki?

Over the last year, we’ve thought about where wiki might be going in the future to support organizations. Wiki engines and wiki farms are growing—there are hundreds available for selection. The wikis of today, and those of the future, will offer improved functionality and ease of use

• WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor
  More and more functions are being added to the wikis. The WYSIWYG editor is important because some are still apprehensive about learning and using wikitext.

• Skins or templates for page design
  Wikis are offering neat skins or site templates that allow a user to customize the look of the site. Many allow users to customize the look and feel of the site, but some require additional technical knowledge at this time for this.

• User customization
  With domain mapping and the customization of CSS templates, it’s possible to make your wiki look like your organization’s website and connect it your existing web presence with just a little effort. When connected, your site visitors don't even realize that they are viewing an external wiki site.

• Media-rich
  Wikis are evolving – what previously were sites with lots of text (and very little, if any, graphics) has transformed into media-rich, graphic sites that look like normal websites, but just offer the capability to edit the content in real-time.

• Applications
  Applications for wikis are growing. Some wikis have applications (such as spreadsheets, polls, online chat) that may be easily included on the site.

• Plug-ins
  Some wikis allow you to select among a set of modules to easily add features and function to your pages. For example, a plug-in may be available to post the last date the site was updated. Or, a plug-in may be available to display a visitor counter on a page.

• Spam management

Controlling spam can be a challenge for most wiki organizers. Some wikis offers a variety of tools and functions that enable to wiki organizer to reduce spam introduced on the wiki.

• Portability solutions
  Given the vast differences in wiki engines and wiki farms, managing portability issues is a concern. A choice is often a commitment today. There are a few batch transfer options to migrate content from one engine to another. Some farms ask that the organizers select the markup text that can be used— which may ease portability where multiple markup texts are supported.

• Integrating wiki into other collaborative software

The wikis of the future will be integrated into other sites and use additional collaborative software (e.g., online chat, bulletin boards, forums, etc)

Wetpaint, the host of this wiki, is considered to be wiki of the future --- providing many of these features, which are not available on standard wiki engines and some wiki farms.