The term "wiki" comes from the Hawaiian word meaning "quick". In internet culture, the term is associated with the technology that creates collaborative websites, the most known being Wikipedia.
The creator of the wiki, Ward Cunningham, says that he wanted people who wouldn't normally publish their writing to find it comfortable doing The official hidden wiki . People who have something to say often can't find the context to put it in writing. By allowing users to initiate and modify any page in a website is liberating, in the sense that it encourages the equal, democratic use of the Web and promotes content creation by regular people.
Starting from the idea that knowledge should be available for anyone, Wikipedia found an opportunity and went with it - soon becoming one of the most accessed websites and most commonly used sources of reference. It is now obvious that web articles for which you have to pay to read don't have any value - although you might be willing to pay to read them yourself, you can't link to them - they can't be shared, so they don't make it to the spotlight, they don't go viral, they can't be discussed.
Some of the advantages of the wiki are that, although its nature is open, not everyone has the same level of access and some rules are applied at all times. In order to use the wiki, there is no need for additional software, nor is there a need for specialized courses in learning how to manage a wiki. It's also good to know that technical problems are minimal.
Wikipedia was launched in 2001, as an alternative to the traditional encyclopedia. First of all, Wikipedia is free to everyone and it can be edited by anyone. Anonymous users can add, delete or modify content according to their own knowledge. The costs are minimal - unlike paper encyclopedias - and information can be updated instantly. You can start a page and write anything you want in it. Anyone else can come along and make absolutely any changes to it that he wants to. On the newly created page, you can link to any other pages, and, of course, they can link back.
Being open to such a large number of readers and writers, it is not easy to keep all information completely accurate. You can see who added what to a certain article; you can discuss the process of writing the article. The point of view may sometimes be subjective, the article may sometimes share only part of the information. Since errors may still occur, Wikipedia is rarely accepted as an academic source. Sometimes, students can't tell which article is reliable and which isn't, and they quote Wikipedia like it's completely accurate. Nevertheless, it covers an immensity of fields, from history to pop culture, from scientists to starlets and so on. There are pages in virtually any language. The articles are linked to one another, cross referenced, keeping the reader one click away from even more information.
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