Social Software
Functional Overview of Wiki
A defining characteristic of
wiki technology is the simplicity with which pages can be created and updated.
Many wikis are open to the general public without the need to register any user
account. However, there are some private wikis whose wiki servers require user
authentication to edit, sometimes even to read pages.
In
order to edit a wiki page, user normally need to edit the source code,
sometimes known as a simplified markup language to indicate various structural
and visual conventions. Some recent wiki engines use a different method that is
called "WYSIWYG" ("What You See Is What You Get"
editing,
usually by means of JavaScript or an ActiveX control that translates
graphically entered formatting instructions. In this way, users would feel comfortable
to edit a wiki page. Simple wiki allows only basic text formatting. However,
more complex ones have support for tables, images, formulas, or even
interactive elements such as polls and games.
Wiki in generally provides a
version control function, which is used to manage the changes of a certain
content. Each article provides one-click access to the history/versioning page,
which also supports version differencing ("diff" and retrieving
prior versions. Many wikis allow users to supply an "edit summary"
along with their change. This is a short piece of text summarizing the changes
made that is not inserted into the article, but is stored along with that
revision, allowing users to explain what has been done and why. This is similar
to a log message when committing changes to a revision control system.
Most wikis offer at least a title search, and
sometimes a full-text search. The scalability of the search depends on whether
the wiki engine uses a database. Indexed database access is necessary for high
speed searches on large wikis. Alternatively, external search engines such as
Google can sometimes be used on wikis with limited searching functions in order
to obtain more precise results.
Posted at 09:34AM Jun 12, 2007 by Xuan Zhang in Wikis |
