Wiki

Wikihack is a wiki; it is a web site that allows all readers, including you, to edit almost any page. The process is simple: click "edit" at the top of a page, make some changes in the box that appears, and then save them.

If this seems strange (or if wiki seems familiar, but Wikihack seems strange), you might want to experiment by editing the Wikihack:Sandbox. If you want to learn about this wiki, read Wikihack:About. The remainder of this page concerns the origin of wiki, from the perspective of this wiki.

This page is a stub. Should you wish to do so, you can contribute by expanding this page.

Founding of this wiki

This wiki has an entry in the Central Wikicity at w:NetHack. It was founded at 11 October 2005 by User:Sgeo. Users immediately began the task of SeedPosting the wiki with new articles.

Origin of wiki

The wiki concept starts with the WikiWikiWeb, nominally the "Portland Pattern Repository". You can find it at Wiki:WelcomeVisitors. The intention was to discuss "PeopleProjectsAndPatterns in SoftwareDevelopment" by letting users write and edit wiki pages. As the WikiWikiWeb grew, people established several SisterSites for other topics.

One of those sister sites was Meatball, which you find at Meatball:MeatballWiki. Meatball is about online communities and BarnRaising. Their wiki script, UseModWiki, became the basis for online reference site Wikipedia, which you find at Wikipedia:Main Page -- an attempt to use wiki to build a free encyclopedia, distributed through the GNU Free Documentation License. They took many features from UseMod and put it in their wiki script, MediaWiki.

MediaWiki

Wikipedia and MediaWiki advanced the wiki concept several ways. To make a link, WikiWikiWeb editors SmashWordsTogether to form a WikiWord. Wikipedia instead adopted the UseMod support for the FreeLink; you use two pairs of square brackets, such as [[soldier ant]] for soldier ant. The other advancement to implement a CopyLeft, the GNU FDL, thus causing the wiki to be free and giving users the RightToFork.

Wikipedia also introduced the concept of neutral point of view or NPOV, an attempt to produce a useful reference from editors who disagree. However, NPOV introduces some serious restrictions on content. One result of this was Wikinfo, which you find at Wikinfo:Main Page, an encyclopedia and fork of Wikipedia which drops the NPOV restriction by switching to sympathetic point of view.

As it is, Meatball chose to retain its CamelCase WikiWords, and recommended against the FreeDocumentationLicense.

Wikipedia is not typical

Wikicities, which you find at w:Wikicities, and of which Wikihack is a part, takes the MediaWiki engine from Wikipedia, and applies to a collection of hundreds of wikis. Wikicities also has free links, and it also uses the GNU FDL copyleft.

Some wikis at Wikicities tend to emulate Wikipedia by calling themselves encyclopedias. The Star Wars wiki, Wookieepedia -- at w:c:StarWars -- does this extremely. A read through w:c:StarWars:Wookieepedia:Welcome, newcomers shows Wookiepedia not only considers "neutral point of view" to be policy, but links to Wikipedia for the policy.

Though some wikis apparently do want to follow Wikipedia policy, this approach has several problems. It requires consensus among wiki users that they want to be like Wikipedia. It causes problems, because Wikipedia has a community that wants to build a free encyclopedia, and that is not the purpose of most other wikis. Some editors at Meatball stated that WikipediaIsNotTypical, but not necessarily for the same reasons mentioned here.