The genre of wikis

Hi people,
this time we are exploring a new genre, that is the genre of wikis. Before starting to create our own virtual spaces, where we can create texts together, it would be useful to understand what the word "wiki" means.

DEFINITION
First of all what wiki means? Wiki is a type of Web Site, in which everybody is allowed to change, adjust or remove contents. We can say that it is a some sort of “collaborative authoring”. Furthermore, the term wiki also can refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a Web site, or to certain specific wiki sites. The first ever wiki is WikiWikiWeb, created by Ward Cunningham in 1994. While, already in the early 2000s, wikis were increasingly adopted in the enterprise as collaborative software.

MAIN CARACTERISTICS
Here after I am going to list some of the manin caracteristics of wikis.

• it does not require users to know HTML
• wiki system may include various tools and meta-content
  
• in many of them there is no need for registration, therefore they are open to the general public
  
• it provides some tools to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages: for example using the “Revision history”
• there are also cases of vandalism and incorrect contents
• many wiki communities are private

WIKIQUETTE
First of all, let me explain you what the word "Wikiquette" means. The word comes from wiki and the English word “etiquette”. It refers to rules to follow in order to behave correctly and how to collaborate with others. The main rule is to treat others with respect, but I’ll list some other rules that in my opinion are important and to be followed:

• be careful of the words you chose, trying to be polite and never ambiguous or rude
• always add your name and the date to your posts




• don’t ignore questions and others critics
  
• be civil and treat others with dignity
  
• avoid reverts and deletions whenever possible
  
• recognize and praise the best work

EXPLORING WIKIS
I spent some time exploring wikis in order to discover their main aspects, such as language, audience, purposes etc.

1. Wikipedia: it is a multilingual, Web-based free content encyclopedia project and it is written collaboratively by volunteers.




2. Wikihow: it is a collaborative project to built the world's largest how-to manual. They try to offer clear solutions to the problems of everyday life: travel, pets, health, communications...




3. Wikibooks: it is a collection of free content textbooks that everybody can edit. They treat different topics such as arts, biology, education, history...




4. Wikitravel: this wiki is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable world-wide travel guide. If you want to travel round the wolrd you should have a look to this website.

ANALYSIS
All these wikis have quite the same characteristics. In all of them the layout is very similar to that of Wikipedia. They are characterized by a huge amount of hyperlinks, always well organized and divided into separate sections. This sort of websites are addressed to people all over the world. In fact, very offen there are sections in different languages. The language they use is very clear and simple. In my opinion articles contained in these wikis, expecially in Wikipedia and Wikibooks are more formal and accurate then, for example, that of blogs.

This is all for now.
Have a nice week-end.
Buy, buy.