Ward Cunningham and co-author Bo Leuf, in their book The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on

the Web, described the essence of the Wiki concept as follows: [8]

 A wiki invites all users—not just experts—to edit any page or to create new pages within
the wiki Web site, using only a standard "plain-vanilla" Web browser without any extra add-
ons.
 Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page
link creation intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page exists or not.
 A wiki is not a carefully crafted site created by experts and professional writers, and
designed for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the typical visitor/user in an ongoing
process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the website landscape.
A wiki enables communities of editors and contributors to write documents collaboratively. All
that people require to contribute is a computer, Internet access, a web browser, and a basic
understanding of a simple markup language (e.g., MediaWiki markup language). A single page in
a wiki website is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire collection of pages, which are
usually well-interconnected by hyperlinks, is "the wiki". A wiki is essentially a database for
creating, browsing, and searching through information. A wiki allows non-linear, evolving,
complex, and networked text, while also allowing for editor argument, debate, and interaction
regarding the content and formatting. [9] A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease
with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review by a moderator or
gatekeeper before modifications are accepted and thus lead to changes on the website. Many
wikis are open to alteration by the general public without requiring registration of user accounts.
Many edits can be made in real-time and appear almost instantly online, but this feature
facilitates abuse of the system. Private wiki servers require user authentication to edit pages, and
sometimes even to read them. Maged N. Kamel Boulos, Cito Maramba, and Steve Wheeler write
that the open wikis produce a process of Social Darwinism. "... because of the openness and
rapidity that wiki pages can be edited, the pages undergo an evolutionary selection process not
unlike that which nature subjects to living organisms. "Unfit" sentences and sections are
ruthlessly culled, edited and replaced if they are not considered "fit", which hopefully results in
the evolution of a higher quality and more relevant page."[10]

Editing
For the project page on editing Wikitext on Wikipedia, see Help:Wikitext.
‹ The template Helpbox is being considered for merging. ›

Wikitext

 Cheatsheet

 All Wikitext

 Magic links

 Visual files

 Sound files

 Tables

 Using templates

Using HTML codes within

Wikitext

 v

 t
  e
Navigation
Some wikis have an Edit button or link directly on the page being viewed, if the user has
permission to edit the page. This can lead to a text-based editing page where participants can
structure and format wiki pages with a simplified markup language, sometimes known
as Wikitext, Wiki markup or Wikicode (it can also lead to a WYSIWYG editing page; see the
paragraph after the table below). For example, starting lines of text with asterisks could create
a bulleted list. The style and syntax of wikitexts can vary greatly among wiki implementations,
[example needed]
 some of which also allow HTML tags.
Consistency
Wikis have favoured plain-text editing, with fewer and simpler conventions than HTML, for
indicating style and structure. Although limiting access to HTML and Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS) of wikis limits user ability to alter the structure and formatting of wiki content, there
are some benefits. Limited access to CSS promotes consistency in the look and feel, and
having JavaScript disabled prevents a user from implementing code that may limit other users'
access.
Basic syntax

MediaWiki syntax (the
Equivalent HTML (another type of Rendered output
"behind the scenes" code
"behind the scenes" code used to (seen onscreen by a
used to add formatting to
add formatting to text) regular web user)
text)

"Take some more tea,"

"Take some more <p>"Take some more <a the March Hare said to
[[tea]]," the March href="/wiki/Tea" Alice, very earnestly.
Hare said to Alice, title="Tea">tea</a>," the
very earnestly. March Hare said to Alice, "I've had nothing yet,"
very earnestly.</p> Alice replied in an
"I've had offended tone, "so I
'''nothing''' yet," <p>"I've had <b>nothing</b> can't take more."
Alice replied in an yet," Alice replied in an
"You mean you can't
offended tone, "so I offended tone, "so I can't
can't take more." take more."</p> take less," said the
Hatter. "It's very easy to
"You mean you can't <p>"You mean you can't take take more than
take ''less''," said <i>less</i>," said the nothing."
the Hatter. "It's very Hatter. "It's very easy to
easy to take ''more'' take <i>more</i> than
than nothing." nothing."</p>

Visual editing
Wikis can also make WYSIWYG editing available to users, usually by means of JavaScript
control that translates graphically entered formatting instructions into the corresponding HTML
tags or wikitext. In those implementations, the markup of a newly edited, marked-up version of
the page is generated and submitted to the server transparently, shielding the user from this
technical detail. An example of this is the VisualEditor on Wikipedia. WYSIWYG controls do not,
however, always provide all of the features available in wikitext, and some users prefer not to use
a WYSIWYG editor. Hence, many of these sites offer some means to edit the wikitext directly.
Version history
Some wikis keep a record of changes made to wiki pages; often, every version of the page is
stored. This means that authors can revert to an older version of the page should it be necessary
because a mistake has been made, such as the content accidentally being deleted or the page
has been vandalized to include offensive or malicious text or other inappropriate content.
Edit summary
Many wiki implementations, such as MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia, allow users
to supply an edit summary when they edit a page. This is a short piece of text summarizing the
changes they have made (e.g., "Corrected grammar," or "Fixed formatting in table."). It is not
inserted into the article's main text, but is stored along with that revision of the page, allowing
users to explain what has been done and why, similar to a log message when making changes in
a revision-control system. This enables other users to see which changes have been made by
whom and why, often in a list of summaries, dates and other short, relevant content, a list which
is called a "log" or "history."

Navigation
Within the text of most pages, there are usually many hypertext links to other pages within the
wiki. This form of non-linear navigation is more "native" to a wiki than structured/formalized
navigation schemes. Users can also create any number of index or table-of-contents pages, with
hierarchical categorization or whatever form of organization they like. These may be challenging
to maintain "by hand", as multiple authors and users may create and delete pages in an ad hoc,
unorganized manner. Wikis can provide one or more ways to categorize or tag pages to support
the maintenance of such index pages. Some wikis, including the original, have a backlink feature,
which displays all pages that link to a given page. It is also typically possible in a wiki to create
links to pages that do not yet exist, as a way to invite others to share what they know about a
subject new to the wiki. Wiki users can typically "tag" pages with categories or keywords, to
make it easier for other users to find the article. For example, a user creating a new article
on cold weather cycling might "tag" this page under the categories of commuting, winter sports
and bicycling. This would make it easier for other users to find the article.

Linking and creating pages

Links are created using a specific syntax, the so-called "link pattern". Originally, most wikis [citation
needed]
 used CamelCase to name pages and create links. These are produced by capitalizing words
in a phrase and removing the spaces between them (the word "CamelCase" is itself an
example). While CamelCase makes linking easy, it also leads to links in a form that deviates
from the standard spelling. To link to a page with a single-word title, one must abnormally
capitalize one of the letters in the word (e.g. "WiKi" instead of "Wiki"). CamelCase-based wikis
are instantly recognizable because they have many links with names such as "TableOfContents"
and "BeginnerQuestions." It is possible for a wiki to render the visible anchor of such links
"pretty" by reinserting spaces, and possibly also reverting to lower case. This reprocessing of the
link to improve the readability of the anchor is, however, limited by the loss of capitalization
information caused by CamelCase reversal. For example, "RichardWagner" should be rendered
as "Richard Wagner", whereas "PopularMusic" should be rendered as "popular music". There is
no easy way to determine which capital letters should remain capitalized. As a result, many wikis
now have "free linking" using brackets, and some disable CamelCase by default.

Searching
Most wikis offer at least a title search, and sometimes a full-text search. The scalability of the
search depends on whether the wiki engine uses a database. Some wikis, such as PmWiki,
use flat files.[11] MediaWiki's first versions used flat files, but it was rewritten by Lee Daniel
Crocker in the early 2000s (decade) to be a database application. Indexed database access is
necessary for high speed searches on large wikis. Alternatively, external search engines such
as Google Search can sometimes be used on wikis with limited searching functions in order to
obtain more preci