opensourcewebsolution

What is Wiki?

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.

Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users.

Benefits of Wiki

• Colleagues and students can engage in instantaneous collaboration, editing, and sharing
• Users (students, faculty, staff, outside experts) can easily locate information, find and read comments, provide feedback, and evaluate different versions of each page
• Easy to include distant and/or non-affiliated constituents (outside expert to participate in/scrutinize work)
• Faculty can set different levels of permissions and security. This includes who has rights to view, edit, create, or make other changes.
• Creating and editing wiki-pages requires no special software or training
• Connect from anywhere the Internet is accessed