History Of Wikis
History Of Wikis[[File:Ward Cunningham - Commons-1.jpg|thumb|[[Ward Cunningham]], the developer of the first wiki software, [[WikiWikiWeb]]]]
The history of wikis is generally dated from 1994, when [[Ward Cunningham]] gave the name "[[WikiWikiWeb]]" to the knowledge base, which ran on his company's website at c2.com, and the [[wiki software]] that powered it. c2.com thus became the first true [[wiki]], or a website with pages and links that can be easily edited via the [[Web browser|browser]], with a reliable version history for each page. He chose "WikiWikiWeb" as the name based on his memories of the "[[Wiki Wiki Shuttle]]" at [[Honolulu International Airport]], and because "wiki" is the [[Hawaiian language|Hawaiian]] word for "quick".
Wiki software has some conceptual origins in the [[version control]] and [[hypertext]] systems used for documentation and software in the 1980s, and some actualized origins in the 1970s "Journal" feature of [[oNLine System|NLS]]. Its distant ancestors include [[Vannevar Bush]]'s proposed "[[memex]]" system in 1945, the collaborative hypertext database [[ZOG (hypertext)|ZOG]] in 1972, the [[NoteCards]] system from [[Xerox]], the [[Apple, Inc.|Apple]] hypertext system [[HyperCard]]; As was typical of these earlier systems, Cunningham's motive was technical: to facilitate communication between software developers.
Many alternative wiki applications and websites appeared over the next five years. In the meantime, the first wiki, now known as "WardsWiki", evolved as features were added to the software and as the growing body of users developed a unique "wiki culture". By 2000, WardsWiki had developed a great deal of content outside of its original stated purpose, which led to the spinoff of content into sister sites, most notably [[MeatballWiki]].
The website [[Wikipedia]], a free content encyclopedia, was launched in January 2001, and quickly became the most popular wiki, which it remains to this day. Its meteoric rise in popularity (it entered the top ten most popular sites in 2007) played a large part in introducing wikis to the general public.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} There now exist at least hundreds of thousands of wiki websites, and they have become increasingly prevalent in corporations and other organizations.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}}
== Hypertext editing pre-1994==
A distant precursor of the wiki concept was [[Vannevar Bush]]'s vision of the "[[memex]]," a microfilm reader which would create automated links between documents. In a 1945 essay in [[Atlantic Monthly]] titled "[[As We May Think]]," Bush described an imaginary future user interface: "Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions… The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined…. Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn…"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush |title=Vannevar Bush, "As we may think," 1945 |publisher=Theatlantic.com |date=2010-09-09 |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref> This vision, though it has been described as predicting the [[World Wide Web]], resembles wikis more than the web in one important way: the system being described is self-contained, not a loose network.
In 1972 [[Kristo Ivanov]] published a PhD dissertation on Quality-control of information,<ref>[[Kristo Ivanov|Ivanov, Kristo]] (1972). [http://www8.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/diss-avh.html Quality-control of information]. Stockholm: The Royal Institute of Technology KTH. (Doctoral diss. [[National Technical Information Service|NTIS]], # PB-219297.)</ref> containing a theoretical basis for what corresponds to the wiki-idea, in terms of systemic social interaction. Information turns into knowledge as a net of contributions and negotiations converge about a core concept, or entity. The emphasis is on a dynamically documented "agreement in the context of maximum possible disagreement," akin to the discussions in [[Talk Page Guidelines|talk pages]] and the results of [[Revision history|view history]] of Wikipedia.
===Pre-World-Wide-Web hypertext systems=== An indirect precursor of the wiki concept was the [[ZOG (hypertext)|ZOG]] multi-user database system, developed in 1972 by researchers at [[Carnegie-Mellon University]]. The ZOG interface consisted of text-only frames, each containing a title, a description, a line with standard ZOG commands, and a set of selections (hypertext links) leading to other frames.
Two members of the ZOG team, [[Donald McCracken?]] and [[Robert Akscyn]], spun off a company from CMU in 1981 and developed an improved version of ZOG called [[Knowledge Management System]] (KMS). KMS was a collaborative tool based on [[direct manipulation interface|direct manipulation]], permitting users to modify the contents of frames, freely intermixing text, graphics and images, any of which could be linked to other frames. Because the database was distributed and accessible from any workstation on a network, changes became visible immediately to other users, enabling them to work concurrently on shared structures (documents, programs, ...). <ref name=origin>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiOrigin |title=Wiki Wiki Origin |publisher=C2.com |date=2008-06-25 |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref>
Three notable hypertext-based systems emerged in the 1980s, that may have been inspired by ZOG, KMS and/or one another: the [[NoteCards]] system, developed in 1984 and released by [[Xerox]] in 1985; Janet Walker's [[Symbolics Document Examiner]], created in 1985 for the operation manuals of [[Symbolics]] computers; and [[Bill Atkinson]]'s WildCard application, on which he began work in 1985, and which was released in 1987 as [[HyperCard]].<ref name=origin/> Ward Cunningham has stated, that the wiki idea was influenced by his experience using HyperCard: he was shown the software by fellow programmer [[Kent Beck]], before its official release (it was still called "WildCard" at the time), and, in his words, was "blown away" by it.<ref name="wikiwikihypercard">{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiHyperCard |title=Wiki Wiki HyperCard |publisher=C2.com |date=2008-06-11 |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref><ref name=wikihistory>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiHistory |title=Wiki History |publisher=C2.com |date= |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref>
Cunningham used HyperCard to make a stack holding three kinds of information: ideas, people who hold ideas, and projects where people share ideas. (He would later use this same architecture for the Patterns, People and Projects listed on the front page of his original wiki, the WikiWikiWeb.) Cunningham made a single card that would serve for all uses. It had three fields: Name, Description and Links. Cunningham configured the system so that links could be created to cards that didn't exist yet; creating such a link would in turn create a new blank card.<ref name="wikiwikihypercard" />
===The World Wide Web=== {{Main|History of the World Wide Web }}
In 1990, [[Tim Berners-Lee]] of [[CERN]] built the first hypertext client, which he called World Wide Web (it was also a Web editor), and the first hypertext server (info.cern.ch). In 1991 he posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext [[newsgroup]], marking the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.
Early adopters of the World Wide Web were primarily university-based scientific departments or physics laboratories. In May 1992 appeared [[ViolaWWW]], a graphical [[web browser|browser]] providing features such as embedded graphics, scripting, and animation. However, the turning point for the World Wide Web was the introduction of the [[Mosaic (web browser)|Mosaic]] graphical browser in 1993, which gained wide popularity due to its strong support of integrated multimedia. In April 1994, CERN agreed that anyone could use the Web protocol and code for free.
==WikiWikiWeb and the birth of wikis (1994–2001)==
===WikiWikiWeb, the first wiki=== [[Ward Cunningham]] started developing the [[WikiWikiWeb]] in 1994 as a supplement to the [[Portland Pattern Repository]], a website containing documentation about [[Design Patterns]], a particular approach to [[object-oriented programming]].<ref name=wikihistory/>
The WikiWikiWeb was intended as a collaborative database, in order to make the exchange of ideas between programmers easier; it was dedicated to "People, Projects and Patterns."<ref name=wikihistory/> Cunningham wrote the software to run it using the Perl programming language. He considered calling the software "quick-web," but instead named it using the Hawaiian word "wiki-wiki," which means "quick-quick" or "very quick,"<ref name=wikihistory/> based on his memory of the [[Wiki Wiki Shuttle]] at [[Honolulu International Airport]].
Cunningham installed a prototype of the software on his company [[Cunningham & Cunningham]]'s website c2.com.<ref name=mail>http://c2.com/wiki/mail-history.txt</ref> On March 16, 1995, when the site was functioning, Cunningham sent to a colleague the following email:
:Steve – I've put up a new database on my web server and I'd like you to take a look. It's a web of people, projects and patterns accessed through a [[cgi-bin]] script. It has a forms based authoring capability that doesn't require familiarity with html. I'd be very pleased if you would get on and at least enter your name in RecentVisitors. I'm asking you because I think you might also add some interesting content. I'm going to advertise this a little more widely in a week or so. The URL is http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki. Thanks and best regards. – Ward <ref name=mail/>
Cunningham dates the official start of WikiWikiWeb as March 25, 1995.<ref name=wikihistory/> On May 1, 1995 he sent an email about the website to a number of programmers, which caused an increase in participation.<ref name=wikihistory/> This note was posted to the "Patterns" [[listserv]], a group of software developers gathered under the name "[[The Hillside Group]]" to develop [[Erich Gamma]]'s use of object-oriented patterns. Cunningham had noticed that the older contents of the listserv tended to get buried under the more recent posts, and he proposed instead to collect ideas in a set of pages which would be collectively edited. Cunningham’s post stated: "The plan is to have interested parties write web pages about the People, Projects and Patterns that have changed the way they program." He added: "Think of it as a moderated list where anyone can be moderator and everything is archived. It's not quite a chat, still, conversation is possible."<ref>Robert E. Cummings, What Was a Wiki, and Why Do I Care? A Short and Usable History of Wikis [http://www.wildwiki.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=%E2%80%9CWhatWas_a_Wiki%2C_and_Why_Do_I_Care%3F_A_Short_and_Usable_History_of_Wikis%E2%80%9D]</ref>
The site was immediately popular within the pattern community.<ref name=wikihistory/>
===CamelCase and internal links=== Among Cunningham's innovations in creating WikiWikiWeb was the ability to easily link internally between pages; something that was often cumbersome to do in previous intranet and document management systems. Cunningham's solution to this was to automatically link any text expressed in [[CamelCase]]; including text for which a corresponding page didn't yet exist.
This CamelCase convention was used by most wiki software for the first few years of wikis' existence. In 2001, the software [[UseModWiki]], which at the time was in use on [[Wikipedia]], switched to allow internal links to be done using standard spelling and double square bracket instead, in order to improve Wikipedia's usability.<ref>[http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-January/000007.html Hello, "FreeLinks" work, and redirected pages.], Clifford Adams, Wikipedia-l mailing list, January 27, 2001</ref> This square bracket syntax has since become more of a default convention for internal links within wiki software in general.
===Release of the Wiki Base software=== Ward Cunningham wrote a version of his wiki software meant for public usage, called "Wiki Base". In his announcement, he wrote: "WikiWikiWeb is almost public. Actually, a pretty good clone of it is public at: http://c2.com/cgi/wikibase. I've translated almost all of the actual wiki script into [[HyperPerl]], a wiki-literate programming system that I think you will like." Visitors were requested to register on the wiki before they took the Wiki Base code.<ref name=wikihistory/> Cunningham expected users to fold changes back into his editable version, but those who implemented changes generally chose to distribute the modified versions on their own sites.<ref name=wikihistory/>
Alternate applications for wikis began to emerge, usually imitating the look-and-feel of WikiWikiWeb/Wiki Base; such applications were originally known as "WikiWikiClones." The first one was most likely created by IBM programmer Patrick Mueller, who wrote his in the [[REXX]] language, even before Wiki Base was released.<ref name=wikihistory/>
===Early wiki websites for software development=== Inspired by the example of the WikiWikiWeb, programmers soon started several other wikis to build knowledge bases about programming topics. Wikis became popular in the free and open-source software ([[FOSS]]) community, where they were used for collaboratively discussing and documenting software.{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}} However, being used only by specialists, these early software-focused wikis failed to attract widespread public attention.<ref>Andy Szybalski, Why it’s not a wiki world (yet), 14 March 2005</ref>
===Growth and innovations in WikiWikiWeb from 1995 to 2000=== The WikiWikiWeb website approximately doubled in size every year 1995 to 2000, with disk usage rising from around 2 megabytes in 1995 to around 60 megabytes at the end of 2000.<ref name=wikihistory/> During that time, various innovations were put in place, many suggested by users, to help with navigation and editing. These included:<ref name=wikihistory/>
Cunningham encouraged contributors to "refactor" (rewrite) the ThreadMode discussions into DocumentMode discourse. In practice many pages started out at the top in DocumentMode and degenerated into ThreadMode further down. When ThreadMode became incomprehensible the result was called "ThreadMess."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ThreadMess |title=Thread Mess |publisher=C2.com |date=2006-10-30 |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref> (In most modern wikis the conflict between these two modes has been resolved by putting all document text on the main page of an article, and all discussion text on a talk page.)
The use of categories was proposed by user Stan Silver on August 27, 1996.<ref name=categories>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HistoryOfCategories |title=History Of Categories |publisher=C2.com |date= |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref> His initial post suggested: "If everyone adds a category and topic to their page, then the category and topic pages themselves can be used as automatic indexes into the pages." <ref name=aboutcategories>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AboutCategoriesAndTopics |title=AboutCategoriesAndTopics |date=1996-08-27 |accessdate=2010-10-08 |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/19961129234150/http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AboutCategoriesAndTopics |archivedate=1996-11-29}}</ref> Initially Silver had proposed both categories and topics: categories denoted the specific nature of the page's subject (a book, a person, a pattern), while topics denoted the theme of the page (Java, extreme programming, Smalltalk). However, people ignored this separation, and topics were collapsed into the categories.<ref name=categories/>
The "ChangeSummary" option began as an aid to telling which changes added interesting new content, and which were just minor adjustments of spelling, punctuation, or correction of web links. It started when some users began taking the RecentChanges page, annotating each line with a brief description of each change, and posting the result to the ChangeSummary page. This practice was highly time-consuming and rapidly petered out, but was replaced by the "MinorEdit/RecentEdits" feature, designed to reduce the RecentChanges clutter.<ref name=wikihistory/>
===Tensions within WikiWikiWeb and the creation of sister sites=== Between early 1998 and the end of 2000 participation in [[WikiWikiWeb]] snowballed, and the disk space consumed by wiki pages more than quadrupuled. With increased participation tensions began to appear.
In 1998 proponents of [[Extreme Programming]] showed up on the site and started posting comments about Extreme Programming on most of the pages related to software development. This annoyed a number people who wanted to talk about patterns, leading to the tag "XpFreeZone," which was put onto pages as a request not to talk about ExtremeProgramming on that page. Eventually most of the DesignPatterns people left to discuss patterns on their own wikis, and WikiWikiWeb began to be referred to as "WardsWiki" instead of the "PortlandPatternRepository."<ref name=wikihistory/>
Around the summer of 1999, user Sam Gentile posted the comment "I'm through here" on his user page, and began systematically removing his text from all pages on WikiWikiWeb that he had contributed to. Gentile worked at [[Microsoft]] and had been hurt by what he perceived as anti-Microsoft bias on WikiWikiWeb. His deletions led to controversy about whether he had the right to remove his own material, and whether others had the right to put it back in (which some began to do).{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} This event became referred to as the "WikiMindWipe."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiMindWipeDiscussion |title=Wiki Mind Wipe Discussion |publisher=C2.com |date= |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref>
In April 2000, four WikiWikiWeb users independently tried to reduce the amount of text on the site via a large number of deletions. They mainly tried to delete material that was related to wikis and not software design patterns.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiOnWiki |title=Wiki On Wiki |publisher=C2.com |date=2005-08-31 |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref> They considered this material to be dead weight, and would have preferred to see it all replaced by concise guidance to newcomers. Contributors who disagreed with these deletions began copying all of the deleted text back in again. A vote was taken on the issue, and it was proposed that any major reductions should be pre-announced, with an opportunity for response before action was taken.<ref name=reductionists>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiReductionists |title=Wiki Reductionists |publisher=C2.com |date= |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref>
The longer-term result of the deletions was the formation of WikiWikiWeb "sister sites" later in 2000. Sunir Shah created a wiki called [[MeatballWiki]], intended strictly for wiki-based documentation and discussions. A few months later, Richard Drake created the WhyClublet (or "Why?") wiki to host discussion of [[Christianity|Christian]] issues, and Peter Merel created GreenCheeseWiki? and The Reform Society to host, respectively, whimsical and political pages. Earle Martin subsequently created a catch-all for C2 off-topic pages called TheAdjunct. Many pages were moved from WikiWikiWeb to these alternative sites, with a stub of the moved page left on the WikiWikiWeb, containing a link to the new page and the message "This page exists only on SisterSites."
In 2001, Cunningham and user [[Bo Leuf]] published a book, [[The Wiki Way]], which distilled the lessons learned during the collective experience of the first [[wiki]].<ref>Ward Cunningham and Bo Leuf, The Wiki Way, 2001</ref>
===Other wiki websites, 1999–2000=== While many early wiki websites were devoted to the development of open source software, one early wiki was created by the [[FoxPro]] user community. The FoxPro Wiki was founded in 1999 by Steven Black and evolved into a popular site with many pages.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~WikiFAQ~Wiki |title=Wiki FAQ – Visual FoxPro Wiki |publisher=Fox.wikis.com |date=1999-03-03 |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref>
World66 was a Dutch company which tried to transform the open content idea into a profitable business. The website was founded in 1999 by Richard and Douwe Osinga, and contains travel-related articles covering destinations around the world.
A wiki forum was created in 1999 for discussion of the newly created [[PhpWiki]] software. This became one of the larger software-related wikis. [[Sensei's Library]], a wiki dedicated to discussion of the game of [[Go (game)|Go]], was created by Morten G. Pahle and Arno Hollosi in October 2000. For its first few years of operation, it was one of the largest and most active wikis outside of Wikipedia.
===Other wiki applications, 1997–2000=== Clones of the WikiWikiWeb software began to be developed as soon as Ward Cunningham made the Wiki Base software available online. One of the early clones was [[CvWiki]], developed in 1997 by Peter Merel, which was the first wiki application to have functioning [[transclusion]], [[backlinks]], and "WayBackMode."
JWiki<ref>[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JavaWiki JWiki page on c2.com]</ref> (short for JavaWiki), released in 1997, was the first implementation of WikiWikiWeb in the Java language, and the first to be back-ended by a database. It was developed by Ricardo Clements, a former co-worker of Cunningham's.
Another early wiki engine was JosWiki, developed by an international group of Java programmers who were trying to create a free and open "Java Operating System" (JOS).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JosWiki |title=Jos Wiki |publisher=C2.com |date=2004-12-25 |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref>
[[TWiki]] was created in [[Perl]] by Peter Thoeny in 1998, based on JosWiki. TWiki was aimed at large corporate [[intranet]]s. It stored data in plain text files instead of in a database.
PikiPiki was created by Martin Pool in 1999 as a rewrite of WikiWikiWeb in [[Python (programming language)|Python]].{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} It was made to be a small program, using flat files and doing away with versioning (Pool felt that a wiki is not meant to be a document-management system).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PikiPiki |title=Piki Piki |publisher=C2.com |date=2009-10-22 |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref>
[[PhpWiki]], created by Steve Wainstead in 1999, was the first wiki software written in [[PHP]].{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} The initial version was a feature-for-feature reimplementation of the WikiWikiWeb software. Subsequent versions adopted many features from UseModWiki.
[[Swiki]] was written in [[Squeak]] by [[Mark Guzdial]] and Jochen Rick in 1999.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}}
[[Zwiki]], written in Python in 1999, is based on the [[Zope]] web application server (it can also co-exist with the Plone content management system). It was initially developed by Simon Michael and [[Joyful Systems]].{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} It uses a ZODB Object Database.
[[Traction TeamPage]] was released in December 1999; it was the first proprietary wiki application aimed at enterprise customers.
[[UseModWiki]] was developed from 1999 to 2000 by Clifford Adams. UseModWiki is a flat-file wiki written in Perl. It was based on Markus Denker's AtisWiki, which was in turn based on CvWiki. It introduced the square bracket syntax for linking words that was later adopted by many other wiki engines, such as MediaWiki.
[[MoinMoin]], created in Python by Jürgen Hermann and Thomas Waldmann in mid-2000, was initially based on PikiPiki. It is a flat-file wiki with a simple code base but many possible extensions. MoinMoin uses the idea of separating the parsers (for parsing the [[wiki syntax]]) from the formatters (for outputting HTML code), with an interface between them, so that new parsers and output formatters can be written.
==2001–2003: Wikipedia's early years==
===The creation of Wikipedia=== {{Main|History of Wikipedia}}
Until 2001, wikis were virtually unknown outside of the restricted circles of computer programmers.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} Wikis were introduced to the general public by the success of Wikipedia,{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} a free content encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone.
Wikipedia was originally conceived as a complement to [[Nupedia]], a free on-line encyclopedia founded by [[Jimmy Wales]], with articles written by highly qualified contributors and evaluated by an elaborate peer review process. The writing of content for Nupedia proved to be extremely slow, with only 12 articles completed during the first year, despite a mailing-list of interested editors and the presence of a full-time editor-in-chief recruited by Wales, [[Larry Sanger]].{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} Learning of the wiki concept, Wales and Sanger decided to try creating a collaborative website to provide an additional source of rapidly-produced draft articles that could be polished for use on Nupedia.
Nupedia's editors and reviewers resisted the idea of associating Nupedia with a wiki-style website, so Wikipedia was launched on its own domain, wikipedia.com, on January 15, 2001.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} It initially ran on [[UseModWiki]] software, with the original text stored in flat-files rather than in a database, and with articles named using the [[CamelCase]] convention. UseModWiki was replaced by a PHP wiki engine in January 2002 and by [[MediaWiki]] in July 2002.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}}
Wikipedia attracted new participants after being mentioned on [[Slashdot]] as well as in an article on the community-edited website [[Kuro5hin]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kuro5hin.org/hotlist/add/2001/7/25/103136/121/displaystory |title=Britannica or Nupedia? The Future of Free Encyclopedias |publisher=Kuro5hin.org |date= |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref> It quickly overtook Nupedia. In the first year of its existence, over 20,000 encyclopedia entries were created.
===Wikimedia Foundation and first Wikipedia sister projects=== Wales, and other members of the Wikipedia user community, founded Wikipedia's first "sister site," "In Memoriam: September 11 Wiki,"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sep11memories.org/wiki/In_Memoriam |title=In Memoriam: September 11, 2001 |accessdate=2007-02-06}}</ref> in October 2002;<ref>[http://www.sep11memories.org/index.php?title=In_Memoriam&oldid=1502 First edit to the wiki] In Memoriam: September 11 wiki (October 28, 2002),</ref> it detailed the [[September 11 attacks]]. (This project was closed in October 2006.) A second sister site, [[Wiktionary]], was created in December 2002; the site was meant to be a collaboratively-created dictionary.
In June 2003, Wales founded the [[Wikimedia Foundation]], a non-profit organization, to manage Wikipedia and all its sister projects going forward. Two additional Wikimedia projects were added soon thereafter: [[Wikiquote]], a reference for notable quotations, and [[Wikibooks]], for collaboratively creating textbooks, both in July 2003. Another project, [[Wikisource]], was added in November 2003; it was originally named "Project Sourceberg" (a play on [[Project Gutenberg]]), then renamed "Wikisource" in December 2003.
===Other wiki websites, 2001–2003=== [[MeatballWiki]] rapidly became a popular wiki for discussions of wiki-related topics. The users of MeatballWiki came up with several ideas on the linking together of wikis, including:<ref>[http://wikinodes.wiki.taoriver.net/moin.cgi/ProgressionOfWikiOrganization ProgressionOfWikiOrganization? – WikiNodes<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?InterWiki |title=Inter Wiki |publisher=C2.com |date= |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref>
Disinfopedia was launched by Sheldon Rampton in March 2003. It aimed to produce a directory of public relations firms and industry-funded organizations that attempt to influence public opinion and public policy. It was later renamed [[SourceWatch]], and is currently run by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).
[[Javapedia]] was a wiki inspired by Wikipedia. The project was launched in June 2003 during the JavaOne developer conference, and was intended to cover all aspects of the [[Java (programming language)|Java]] platform.
[[Wikitravel]] was started in July 2003 by [[Evan Prodromou]] and Michele Ann Jenkins.
[[Memory Alpha]] is a wiki devoted to the [[Star Trek]] fictional universe. It was launched by Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson in December 2003. For its first several years, it was one of the largest wiki projects.
This period also saw the creation of several other general wiki encyclopedias, created either independently of Wikipedia or meant to serve as an alternative to Wikipedia in order to fix some perceived weakness in it:
[[MediaWiki]] was written for Wikipedia in 2002 by [[Lee Daniel Crocker]], based on the user interface design of an earlier PHP wiki engine developed by [[Magnus Manske]]. Manske's PHP-based software suffered load problems due to increased use, so Crocker re-wrote the software with a more scalable [[MySQL]] database backend. As Wikipedia grew, achieving scalability through multiple layers of caching and database replication became a major concern for the developers. [[Internationalization]] was also a major concern{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} (the user interface has been translated into more than 70 languages). One of the earliest differences between MediaWiki and other wiki engines was the use of freely-formatted links instead of links in CamelCase. MediaWiki provides specialized syntax to support rich content, such as rendering mathematical formulas using [[LaTeX]], [[graphical plotting]], image galleries and [[thumbnails]], and [[Exchangeable image file format|Exif metadata]]. MediaWiki lacks native WYSIWYG support, but comes with a graphical toolbar to simplify editing. One MediaWiki innovation for structuring content is "[[namespaces]]." Namespaces allow each article to contain multiple sheets with different standard names: one sheet presents the encyclopedic content, another contains the discussions surrounding it, and so on.
[[PmWiki]] was created in PHP by Patrick Michaud in 2002. It is a flat-file wiki engine that was designed to be easy to install and customize. PmWiki offers a template scheme that makes it possible to change the look and feel of the wiki. Customization is made easy through a wide selection of custom extensions, known as "recipes" available from the PmWiki Cookbook.
TikiWiki was created in PHP by Luis Argerich in 2002. It was later renamed "[[Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware]]", or simply "Tiki", as it gained additional [[Content Management System|CMS]] and [[groupware]] features. TikiWiki is modular with components that can be individually enabled and customized by the administrator, and extends customization to the user with selectable skins and themes.
[[WakkaWiki]], an open-source PHP wiki engine, was created by Carlos Zottman and Hendrik Mans in September 2002. It was discontinued in 2004. WakkaWiki spawned at least five forks: CitiWiki, UniWakka, [[WackoWiki]], WikiNi and [[WikkaWiki]].
[[Socialtext]] launched in 2002; it was the second proprietary enterprise-focused wiki application, after Traction TeamPage.
[[XWiki]] is an open-source Java wiki application that was created by Ludovic Dubost in January 2003. Dubost set up hosting of XWiki-based wikis on the domain xwiki.com in April 2003 - xwiki.com thus became an early (and possibly the first) [[wiki hosting service]], or "wiki farm."
[[EditMe]] was another early wiki farm, launched in August 2003. The site used proprietary wiki software, written in Java.
As they developed, wikis incorporated many of the features used on other websites and blogs, including:
In October 2004, the wiki hosting service Wikicities launched, co-founded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation board member [[Angela Beesley]]. In March 2006, it changed its name to [[Wikia]]. Wikia remains the best-known and most popular wiki farm.{{citation needed|date=May 2012}}
A large number of other notable wiki farms were released soon afterward, including [[Wikispaces]] (launched March 2005), PBwiki (launched June 2005, later renamed [[PBworks]]) and [[Wetpaint]] (launched October 2005). [[Wikidot]] was launched in August 2006.
2005 marked the beginning of large-scale wiki-related meetings and conferences. August 2005 saw the first-ever [[Wikimania]], an annual conference organized around Wikimedia Foundation projects, in [[Frankfurt]], [[Germany]]. [[WikiSym]], a more academic annual symposium about wikis in general, was first held a few months later, in October 2005, in [[San Diego]], [[California]]. [[RecentChangesCamp]], an [[unconference]] dedicated to wikis, was first held in February 2006 in [[Portland, Oregon]]. Wikimania and WikiSym remain the two largest wiki-related gatherings.
Around 2005 wikis began to be massively confronted with "wiki spam," produced by spammers who enter website addresses onto wikis in order to improve the ranking of the displayed websites by search engines. Various strategies have been developed to counter wiki spam.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://wiki.chongqed.org |title=chongqed.org wiki: WikiHome? |publisher=Wiki.chongqed.org |date= |accessdate=2010-10-08}}</ref>
===Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects=== Wikipedia experienced exponential growth in usage and readership during the period from 2004 to 2006, rising in [[Alexa Internet|Alexa]] rankings from the top 1000 websites into the top 15.<ref>[[meta:Wikipedia.org is more popular than...#Wikipedia's Alexa ranking milestones (3 month average)|Wikipedia's Alexa ranking milestones (3 month average)]], Wikimedia Meta</ref> It was named one of the top 5 global brands of 2006 in the [[Brandchannel]] Readers' Choice Awards.<ref>[http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=352 Similar Search Results: Google Wins], Anthony Zumpano, Brandchannel, January 29, 2007</ref>
In 2004 the Wikimedia Foundation launched three new sites: [[Wikispecies]], for cataloging species, in August 2004, [[Wikimedia Commons]], to hold images and other media used by the Wikimedia projects, in September 2004, and [[Wikinews]], for publishing collaborative news articles, in December 2004. [[Wikiversity]], intended for tutorials and other courseware, was later launched in August 2006.
In November 2005, journalist [[John Seigenthaler]] wrote a much-publicized article in [[USA Today]] about Wikipedia's article about him, which for over four months had contained a false statement about him, inserted as a joke, stating that he had been a suspect in the assassinations of [[John F. Kennedy]] and [[Robert F. Kennedy]]. The USA Today article generated a [[Wikipedia biography controversy|subsequent controversy]] that both caused Wikipedia to tighten its standards for creating articles, especially articles about living people, and highlighted the growing importance of Wikipedia as a source of information.
During this period, Wikipedia also began to enter the popular culture. A prominent example was the [[Weird Al Yankovic]] parody song "[[White & Nerdy]]," which peaked at #9 on the [[Billboard Hot 100]] in late 2006, and contained the lyric "I edit Wikipedia." In December 2006, [[Time (magazine)|Time]] magazine chose "[[You (Time Person of the Year)|You]]" as their [[Time Person of the Year|Person of the Year]], referring to the rise of [[Web 2.0]] and web technologies that allow for user-contributed content, and cited Wikipedia as one of the key websites that allow for "community and collaboration on a scale never seen before."<ref>{{Cite news| author=Lev Grossman | title=Time's Person of the Year: You | url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html | work=Time | date=13 December 2006 | accessdate=2010-02-07}}</ref>
===Other wiki websites, 2004–2006=== In July 2004, [[OpenStreetMap?]], a website to create an open-source street map of the world using wiki functionality, was launched.
Most of the major [[satire|satirical]] wikis launched at around this time. [[Encyclopedia Dramatica]], which mocked [[internet culture]], was founded in December 2004 (it was shut down in April 2011). [[Stupidedia]], a [[German language|German-language]] wiki intended as a direct parody of Wikipedia, was also founded in December 2004, a week later. [[Uncyclopedia]], an English-language wiki also intended to parody Wikipedia, was founded the next month, in January 2005; it was later extended to dozens of other languages, and merged in other wikis, including Stupidedia. [[La Frikipedia]], a [[Spanish language|Spanish-language]] parody of Wikipedia, was founded in October 2005.
In January 2005, the wiki [[wikiHow]] was created as a component of the how-to website [[eHow]]. In April 2006, its creators sold off eHow and focused full-time on wikiHow, which was launched at its own domain.<ref>{{cite web| last = Herrick| first = Jack| title = History of eHow and wikiHow| publisher = wikiHow|date=September 2006| url = http://www.wikihow.com/History-of-eHow-and-wikiHow}}</ref> Both sites receive tens of millions of hits a month.
In April 2006, the company [[Internet Brands]] bought the sites WikiTravel and World66.<ref>{{cite web| title=Internet Brands Acquires Wikitravel and World66 Online Travel Guides; Company Will Fund Growth of Two of the World's Fastest Growing Wiki Travel Sites (press release) |url=http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060420005313/en/Internet-Brands-Acquires-Wikitravel-World66-Online-Travel |publisher=BusinessWire? |date=April 20, 2006}}</ref> The purchase of WikiTravel by a commercial entity led to the creation of the non-commercial travel wiki [[Wikivoyage]] by some former WikiTravel authors and administrators in December 2006. Wikivoyage originally held content in German and Italian, and started as a fork of WikiTravel content; in 2013 it would become a WMF site.
Two major [[China|Chinese]] wiki encyclopedias began in 2006: [[Baidu Baike]] in April and [[Hudong]] in November. Both currently hold millions of articles, and exceed the popularity of the [[Chinese Wikipedia]] within China. Both are for-profit wikis, that, unlike Wikipedia, hold the copyright to their own content.
===Development of wiki software, 2004–2006=== This period saw the launch of many wiki applications geared toward corporate/enterprise users. Such software was usually [[proprietary software|proprietary]], and it usually included additional functionality, such as [[blog]]s and [[project management software|project management tools]]. Notable wiki software launched during this time includes:
In September 2004 [[Microsoft]] released its [[FlexWiki]], making its source code available on [[SourceForge]].<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Windows/FlexWiki-Microsofts-Third-Open-Software-Project/ |title=FlexWiki: Microsofts Third Open Software Project |work=[[eWeek]] |date=September 28, 2004 |accessdate=April 5, 2012 }}</ref> Though it was generally well-received,<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/96514/a-working-wiki |title=A working wiki |first=Thomas |last=Lee |work=[[PC Pro]] |date=October 26, 2006 |accessdate=April 5, 2012 }}</ref> it failed to become popular and was discontinued in December 2008. In November 2006 Microsoft released [[Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007]],<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.cmswire.com/cms/microsoft/sharepoint-moss-and-office-2007-released-000866.php |title=SharePoint (MOSS) and Office 2007 Released |first=Brice |last=Dunwoodie |work=[[CMSWire]] |date=November 7, 2006 }}</ref> with wiki and blog functionality added, which subsequently replaced FlexWiki as Microsoft's wiki product.
In this period a number of [[semantic wiki]] applications were launched, including the currently most popular one, [[Semantic MediaWiki]] (which was first announced at Wikimania 2005).
==2007–present: wikis enter the mainstream== A milestone in public acceptance of wikis was reached in March 2007 when the word "wiki" entered the [[Oxford English Dictionary]].<ref>[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/16/wiki_oed/ Wiki elevated to Oxford English Dictionary], Lester Haines, The Register, March 16, 2007</ref>
In January 2007, [[Amazon.com]] released [[Amapedia]], a product-review wiki on its own website; it was later shut down in June 2010.
In March 2007, [[Larry Sanger]], co-founder of Wikipedia, launched [[Citizendium]], an "expert-guided" encyclopedia wiki requiring participants to use their real names.
In 2010, the site [[WikiLeaks]] (which had been founded in 2006) gained a great deal of both fame and notoriety as a result of a set of leaked documents the site published of classified materials from the [[United States government]], notably footage of the [[July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike]], the [[Afghan War documents leak]] and the [[United States diplomatic cables leak]]. The site runs on the MediaWiki application, and began as a wiki editable by anyone, but in 2010 had its permissions changed so that only its administrators could edit pages.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/05/wikileaks-assange-returns |title=WikiLeaks Gets A Facelift |publisher=Mother Jones |author=Dave Gilson |date=May 19, 2010 |accessdate=2010-06-17}}</ref>
===Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, 2007–present=== In 2007, Wikipedia entered the top 10 most popular websites in the world.<ref>[http://www.infopackets.com/news/internet/2007/20070223_wikipedia_now_among_top_10_most_popular_sites.htm Wikipedia Now Among Top 10 Most Popular Sites], Chris Sabga, infopackets, February 23, 2007</ref> Wikipedia began to be heavily referenced in television and other media during 2007; see [[Wikipedia in culture]].
In August 2008, then-U.S. presidential candidate [[John McCain?]] was accused of plagiarizing Wikipedia in a speech about [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]].<ref>[http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=e624cd39-b29a-46fb-91f5-e8cebc7900bb McCain? faces accusations of Wikipedia plagiarism], [[The Calgary Herald]], August 19, 2008</ref> In June 2009, journalist [[Chris Anderson (writer)|Chris Anderson]] admitted to plagiarizing a series of Wikipedia articles in his book [[Free: The Future of a Radical Price]]; he called it a "screwup," based on lack of clarity on how to cite a specific version of a Wikipedia article.<ref>{{cite web| last = Jaquith| first = Waldo | title = Chris Anderson’s Free Contains Apparent Plagiarism| publisher = The Virginia Quarterly Review| date = 2009-06-23| url = http://www.vqronline.org/blog/2009/06/23/chris-anderson-free/| accessdate = 2009-07-07 }}</ref>
January 2011 saw the 10th anniversary of the creation of Wikipedia, which occasioned a large [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-17/In the news|round of coverage]] in the international media, most of it positive, including a cover story in German newspaper [[Die Zeit]] with the headline, "The greatest work of mankind."<ref>[http://twitpic.com/3pesre Photo of January 12, 2011 Die Zeit cover], [[TwitPic?]]</ref>
In March 2012, a proposal was made to have the Wikimedia Foundation host a wiki containing travel advice,<ref>[http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikivoyage&oldid=3557418 Earliest edit to page now called "Wikivoyage"], Wikimedia Meta-Wiki]</ref> which led to a discussion and vote lasting several months. In August 2012 the company Internet Brands, owners of the Wikitravel site, sued two of its contributors who had spoken out in favor of the proposal.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/business/media/once-a-profit-dream-wikitravel-now-bedevils-owner.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Travel Site Built on Wiki Ethos Now Bedevils Its Owner], Noam Cohen, [[The New York Times]], September 9, 2012</ref> That lawsuit in turn led the Wikimedia Foundation to sue Internet Brands in September 2012 to not "impede, disrupt or block the creation of" such a site.<ref>[https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/09/05/wikimedia-foundation-seeks-declaratory-relief-in-response-to-legal-threats-from-internet-brands/ Wikimedia Foundation seeks declaratory relief in response to legal threats from Internet Brands], Kelly Kay, Wikimedia Blog, September 5, 2012</ref> The proposal to host a travel guide wiki was ultimately successful, and the decision was made to incorporate [[Wikivoyage]], a Wikitravel spinoff site, as a project.
The project [[Wikidata]] was officially launched on October 30, 2012.<ref>{{cite mailing list |url=http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/2012-October/001151.html |title=wikidata.org is live (with some caveats) |date=October 30, 2012 |accessdate= November 3, 2012 |mailinglist=wikidata-l |last=Pintscher |first=Lydia}}</ref> Wikidata is a collaborative data repository meant to provide a shared set of data that can be used by Wikipedia across all its languages.
January 14, 2013 saw the first official use of Wikidata's data: to enable the automatic display of "interlanguage links" within articles on the [[Hungarian Wikipedia]].<ref>{{cite web | url=http://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/01/14/first-steps-of-wikidata-in-the-hungarian-wikipedia/ | title=First steps of Wikidata in the Hungarian Wikipedia | publisher=Wikimedia Deutschland | date=14 January 2013 | accessdate=15 January 2013 | author=Pintscher, Lydia}}</ref>
On January 15, which was the 12th anniversary of Wikipedia's founding, the new, Wikimedia-hosted Wikivoyage was officially launched.<ref>{{cite web|title=Wikimedia Foundation launches Wikivoyage, a free, worldwide travel guide that anyone can edit|url=http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_launches_Wikivoyage|publisher=[[Wikimedia Foundation]]|accessdate=15 January 2012}}</ref> The lawsuits regarding Wikivoyage between Wikimedia and Internet Brands were settled out of court in February 2013.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wikimedia, Internet Brands settle Wikivoyage lawsuits |url=http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57569807-93/wikimedia-internet-brands-settle-wikivoyage-lawsuits/ |first=Steven |last=Musil |publisher=CNET |date=February 17, 2013}}</ref>
====Reuse of Wikipedia data==== Several applications were developed during this time to make use of Wikipedia's data in order to improve both structured querying and natural-language searching. These included:
===Wiki software, 2007–present=== This period saw consolidation in the set of wiki software being used. A large number of wiki engines ended development during this time, including FlexWiki, [[MojoMojo]], [[PhpWiki]], [[UseModWiki]] and [[Zwiki]].
The open source application MindTouch DekiWiki was launched in June 2007 by MindTouch, Inc. It had started as a fork of MediaWiki, but was then significantly rewritten before its release. DekiWiki was later renamed to "Deki," then "MindTouch Core" and then [[MindTouch]].
In October 2008, most developers of TWiki left the project to work on a fork of the code, [[Foswiki]], after creator Peter Thoeny took control of the TWiki code and trademark via his company, TWiki.net.<ref>[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10078682-16.html TWiki's hunt for cash fractures its community], Matt Asay, CNET News, October 29, 20008</ref>
In May 2009, Google announced its [[Google Wave]] platform (and its associated [[Google Wave Federation Protocol|Federation protocol]]), which would combine the functionality of wikis with e-mail, instant messaging and social networking in order to provide a collaborative, real-time, server-hosted communication platform. Google Wave was released to the general public in May 2010, but development on it was ended several months later, in August 2010. In December 2010, Google transferred control of the software's development to the [[Apache Foundation]], and it was renamed "Apache Wave."
In December 2010, wiki functionality was added to the [[SAP NetWeaver Portal]] application.<ref>[http://www.ameyablog.com/netweaver/netweaver-portal/sap-netweaver-portal-7-3-ramp-up-released/ SAP Netweaver Portal 7.3 ramp-up released], Ameya's Blog, December 3, 2010</ref>
==See also== {{Div col|2}}
==References== {{Reflist|2}}
==External links==
{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Wikis}} [[Category:Wikis]] [[Category:History of the Internet|Wikis]]
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