Modified version of the logo of English Wikipedia celebrating its 25th anniversary Many other Wikipedias are available; some of the largest are listed below. It has a history of consumption by the Māori, with the larva being consumed either raw or traditionally cooked in a hāngī.
A notable discussion within the English Wikipedia community concerns the preference for national variety of the English language, particularly American English and British English. Conflicts of interest arising from corporate campaigns to influence content have also been highlighted. Concerns have also been raised about systemic bias along gender, racial, political, corporate, institutional, and national lines. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias. It was created by Jimmy Wales on 4 December 2003 as an extension of the decision-making power he had formerly held as owner of the site.
The range of quality classes begins with “Stub” (very short pages), followed by “Start”, “C” and “B” (in increasing order of quality). The study identified the most disputed entries on the English Wikipedia as George W. Bush, anarchism, Muhammad, list of WWE personnel, global warming, circumcision, United States, Jesus, race and intelligence, and Christianity. In contrast, articles on other languages’ Wikipedias often focus on regional issues.
History
Common uses included project communication, intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users. Cunningham’s system was inspired by his having used Apple’s hypertext software HyperCard, which allowed users to create interlinked “stacks” of virtual cards. It is typically possible for users of a wiki to create links to pages that do not yet exist, as a way to invite the creation of those pages. Some wiki implementations attempt to improve the display of camel case page titles and links by reinserting spaces and possibly also reverting to lower case, but this simplistic method is not able to correctly present titles of mixed capitalization. While this system made it easy to link to pages, it had the downside of requiring pages to be named in a form deviating from standard spelling, and titles of a single word required abnormally capitalizing one of the letters (e.g. “WiKi” instead of “Wiki”).
Further reading
In early wiki engines, when a page was displayed, any instance of a camel case phrase would be transformed into a link to another page named with the same phrase. Some wikis operate a structure of neighbors and delegates, where a neighbor wiki is one which discusses similar content or is otherwise of interest, and a delegate wiki is one which has agreed to have certain content delegated to it. A WikiNode is a page on a wiki which describes and links to other, related wikis.
- Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules.
- The version history feature allows harmful changes to be reverted quickly and easily.
- English Wikipedia has been characterized as having less cultural bias than other language editions due to its broader editor base.
- Editors of the English Wikipedia have pioneered some ideas as conventions, policies or features which were later adopted by Wikipedia editions in some of the other languages.
- Traditionally, wikis offer free navigation between their pages via hypertext links in page text, rather than requiring users to follow a formal or structured navigation scheme.
- Such links are usually differentiated visually in some fashion, such as being colored red instead of the default blue, which was the case in the original WikiWikiWeb, or by appearing as a question mark next to the linked words.
- WYSIWYG editors may not provide all the features available in wiki markup, and some users prefer not to use them, so a source editor will often be available simultaneously.
Contents
Some wiki engines offer a blacklist feature which prevents users from adding hyperlinks to specific sites that have been placed on the list by the wiki’s administrators. Wiki implementations retaining and allowing access to specific versions of articles has been useful to the scientific community, by allowing expert peer reviewers to provide links to trusted version of articles which they have analyzed. For example, in 2006 a German Wikipedia article about the Blaster Worm was edited to include a hyperlink to a malicious website, and users of vulnerable Microsoft Windows systems who followed the link had their systems infected with the worm. Some wiki engines provide additional content control, allowing remote monitoring and management of a page or set of pages to maintain quality. Wiki administrators maintain content and, through having elevated privileges, are granted additional functions (including, for example, preventing edits to pages, deleting pages, changing users’ access rights, or blocking them from editing). In this concept of wiki federation, in which the same content can be hosted and edited in more than one location in a manner similar to distributed version control, the idea of a single discrete “wiki” no longer made sense.
- Some wiki engines offer a blacklist feature which prevents users from adding hyperlinks to specific sites that have been placed on the list by the wiki’s administrators.
- Some wikis operate a structure of neighbors and delegates, where a neighbor wiki is one which discusses similar content or is otherwise of interest, and a delegate wiki is one which has agreed to have certain content delegated to it.
- While wiki engines have traditionally offered source editing to users, as early as 2013, some implementations have added a rich text editing mode.
- While this system made it easy to link to pages, it had the downside of requiring pages to be named in a form deviating from standard spelling, and titles of a single word required abnormally capitalizing one of the letters (e.g. “WiKi” instead of “Wiki”).
- For the version of Wikipedia written in Basic English, see Simple English Wikipedia.
- Some copyright issues can be alleviated through the use of an open content license.
- In contrast, articles on other languages’ Wikipedias often focus on regional issues.
Wikipedia’s sister projects
Other community news publications include the “WikiWorld” web comic, the Wikipedia Weekly podcast, and newsletters of specific WikiProjects like The Bugle from WikiProject Military History and the monthly newsletter from The Guild of Copy Editors. These groups may focus on a specific topic area (for example, women’s history), a specific location or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages). Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Version 2 of the GNU Free Documentation License royaldogs casino includes a specific provision for wiki relicensing, and Creative Commons licenses are also popular.
Traditionally, wikis offer free navigation between their pages via hypertext links in page text, rather than requiring users to follow a formal or structured navigation scheme. These stores are typically presented for each page in a list, called a “log” or “edit history”, available from the page via a link in the interface. Some wikis present users with an edit button or link on the page being viewed. Wikipedia is not a single wiki but rather a collection of hundreds of wikis, with each one pertaining to a specific language, making it the largest reference work of all time.
WikiNode networks act as webrings which may be navigated from one node to another to find a wiki which addresses a specific subject. Adding categories or tags to a page makes it easier for other users to find it. Wiki implementations can provide one or more ways to categorize or tag pages to support the maintenance of such index pages, such as a backlink feature which displays all pages that link to a given page. Users may also create indexes or table of contents pages, hierarchical categorization via a taxonomy, or other forms of ad hoc content organization.
For the version of Wikipedia written in Basic English, see Simple English Wikipedia. Wikipedi be a free-content online encyclopedia wey community of volunteers, dem know as Wikipedians dey wrep den dey maintain am, thru open collaboration den de wiki software MediaWiki. When no license is specified, an implied license to read and add content to a wiki may be deemed to exist on the grounds of business necessity and the inherent nature of a wiki. Some copyright issues can be alleviated through the use of an open content license.
Such a wiki contains information about specific instances of things, ideas, people and places. The term city wiki is sometimes also used for wikis that cover not just a city, but a small town or an entire region. A city wiki or local wiki is a wiki used as a knowledge base and social network for a specific geographical locale. In academic contexts, wikis have also been used as project collaboration and research support systems.
