Wiki

Wiki (pronounced: “Wickee”, not “Wickah”), was originally “WikiWiki” from the Hawaiian, or “Quick-Quick!”, and is used to identify a specific type of hypertext web page document or collection of documents, such as GetWiki, but it may also refer to the collaborative software used to create a “Wikipage”, such as GetWiki:Overview.

How it works is by generating a normal web page in HTML from a normal document-type of writing, which makes it “Quick-Quick!” to generate that page of content compared to the manual method of typing out an HTML version of the document. Wikis also took advantage of variable-replacement programming techniques to use special modifiers around keywords which need to be links to other pages. In the WikiWorld, this has typically been done by wrapping the term, say “Philosophy”, in ”[[Philosophy]]” double brackets. On GetWiki, links to articles which do not exist in the wiki are presented differently. Then, the software running the web server, for example Apache and PHP with a MariaDB database, will be programmed to “parse” these bracket-wrapped terms into a link like so:

link format	result	link status
[[Philosophy]]	Philosophy	exists in this wiki
[[Fear]]	Fear	does not exist in this wiki(i)

From there, the permutations and adaptations are endless, involving custom programming to generate more and more advanced replacements and modifications of the original document content posted. Blogs, of course, work in a very similar way, but blogs are usually a journal of dated entries, while wikis have no fixed higher level organization. This means each wiki website can be organized completely differently from others using categories or other groupings, while blogs, even if categorized, almost always use the same journal format.

The WikiSphere, like “Blogosphere” (or “BlogoSphere”), refers to the collection of all wikis on the internet, and may be used in CamelCase form. GetWiki is a part of the WikiSphere, as are many others. A number of WikiTerms are commonly used in the WikiSphere, just as in many subcultures. These terms have fairly obvious meanings - such as “WikiSphere” (eg. the “sphere” of “wikis”):

• WikiCulture
• WikiCommunity
• WikiEdit
• WikiMaintenance
• WikiTechnology
• WikiText

A few terms are humourously applicable:

• WikiAnt
• WikiBee
• WikiControversy
• WikiDemocracy
• WikiJunk
• WikiLove
• WikiPraise
• WikiStress

A few more aren't so funny:

• WikiDrone
• WikiFalsity
• WikiHate
• WikiPinion
• WikiPocryphal
• WikiSlant
• WikiSpam
• WikiTerrorism