Nature of wikis

The nature of wikis is worthy of study. This is one of many learning resources at Wikiversity that will explore the "who, what, when, where, why and how" of wiki.

Who's here?

On a wiki, everyone seems to wonder "who's here?"

That's a very natural thing to think about. Nobody wants to join a "dead" project. You want to know that things are happening and that there are "living people" in there with you. The page you are now reading resides at Wikiversity, a dynamic learning community established within the Wikimedia family of projects, which also includes, but is not limited to the world-renowned Wikipedia project. Wikipedia uses wiki technology to build and maintain the world's largest community-built encyclopedia ever. All Wikimedia projects use a particular wiki engine called MediaWiki.

Everyone "here" is listed on a special page, Special:Listusers.

Groups

If there is a "top" (which there actually isn't) of the List of Wikiversity Participants, some might think the list would look like this:

• assigners of rights (bureaucrats)
• custodians (support staff)
• everyone (learning community)

These "groups" are here simply to maintain a bit of policy and order through different roles. It's really no big deal at all.

Entities

Some "users" aren't exactly "people":

• User:MediaWiki default - This is the bot that was used when MediaWiki was first set up at http://en.wikiversity.org - It's dead now.

There are other bots:

• User:ArchiveBot
• User:DraiconeBot
• User:HagermanBot
• User:MichaelBillingtonBot
• User:Sebbot
• User:Wherebot

Self-organization

In a wiki environment, the user base often engages in a social process sometimes called self-organization. The tendency of humans to form groups based on shared interests and other commonality is sometimes phenomenal. The success of Wikipedia is one such example...

Consider the emergence of WikiProjects...

What's here?

Content development is generally the first order of buisiness on a wiki website. Ward Cunningham originally invented the wiki to make a place for people to share ideas openly and easily through a revolutionary web-based application. The interests of the first wave of participants revolved mostly around collaborative software development. The theoretical basis was to simultaneously develop open content within a common context.

..constructing...

Context

A wiki website is hosted on a named domain that identifies its primary context...

Content

...more Content development... edit me!...

See also

• Learning resources about Wikipedia

External resources

• Wiki.org - perhaps the "original" by hosts, Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham.
• ...it's a wiki - add something, already!...