A wiki is any collaborative website that can be edited by anyone. Wikis date back to 1994 when WikiWikiWeb was created. WikiWikiWeb was the first online wiki. Wikis are growing very quickly because of the simplicity. Since anyone can directly change a wiki, it is able to build up very quickly.
Most wikis have an edit button near the top of the article. By pressing the edit button, you will be able to change, add, edit, or delete information. Because of the fact that anybody can edit a wiki, there are those who question how reliable are they. Wikipedia is the most popular wiki on the Internet as it is ranked as one of the top 100 sites in the world. Most Wikipedia articles are reliable, and you hardly see any evidence of vandalism, profanity, or links to inappropriate websites. So how can Wikipedia be so reliable if anyone can edit it?
If one goes to www.wikipedia.org and types in any type of subject in the search box, it will open a typical Wikipedia article. For example, by entering the search term: “World Wrestling Entertainment,” it opens an article containing information on the wrestling company known as WWE. This article is a perfect example of a wiki. In each little section of the article, there is an ‘edit’ button. By pressing this button, one can add, edit, or delete certain information.
Wikidpedia is relatively reliable because it is community based. Article vandalism is rare because it is very easy for people to be able spot any evidence of vandalism. If vandalism is spotted, they can ban the user or IP address from ever editing on the website again. A large portion of Wikipedia’s community is the readers, the other portion acts as article writers, and the final portion of the community is dedicated to editing and revising articles. Also, after contributing to Wikipedia for a certain amount of time, the contributor can be granted the privileges of being an administrator. Administrators have the power to delete and undelete pages, block user IP addresses, and other administrative duties.
All wikis act in a similar way as Wikipedia. That is why they grow so fast and they so reliable.
