Collaborative online knowledge base that allows readers and users to contribute to and edit its encyclopedic-like entries.
“The content of Wikipedia is free, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit entries simply by clicking on the edit this page link. Begun in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet…Because Wikipedia is an ongoing work to which anybody with Internet access can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in some very important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed.” (from Wikipedia)
Starter Links: Wikipedia.org | Article about the contraversial use of wikis
February 11th, 2006 at 9:09 am
I think it’s also important to consider the “wiki” as a format that has enabled massive collaboration and consolidation of parts of the internet. While Wikipedia seems to be the successful flagship of wikis, perhaps it makes sense to examine MediaWiki under Software >> Content Management Systems.
meta.wikimedia.org has a list of sites that use the MediaWiki software.
MediaWiki’s homepage