A wiki is a web page that a viewer can quickly and simply edit, and so its primary attraction is as a vehicle for efficient collaboration (“Wiki wiki” is Hawaiian for “very quickly”). The wiki software archives all changes, so that a wiki contributor (or administrator in a more hierarchical wiki community) can always restore a page to an earlier draft. Wikis originated as an open source technology, and are sometimes called a form of social software.
Wikis were first used by software consultants and developers , but have since become more somewhat famous thanks to the Wikipedia, a collaborative online encyclopedia. See also the FAQ page. However, the Wikipedia is not representative of the range of wikis currently online. Most wikis have a much narrower, non-encyclopedic focus. Wikis have also have been finding wider usage in the private sector, among professional organizations, special interest groups, and in academia. Some wikis are completely public and open. Others require log-ins; still others exist solely within intranets. For a more comprehensive overview, see (what else?), the Wikipedia entry.
Some Orientation to the Ways of Wikis
Wiki software allows the quick creation of new pages, usually by jamming two words together LikeThis (Wikipedia pages are not formed in this way). As soon as a page is created, it can be edited. All saved changes are archived, and so earlier versions of a page can always be restored. Most wiki engines allow users to view recent changes as well as the full revision history of a page. Most wikis will also let users compare “diffs,” or various versions.
Wiki pages are by definition drafts in process. As working documents, they often manifest little interest in fancy (or even simple) aesthetics. Rather than adapt to readers’ expectations of web site structure and page layout, they ask readers to ”learn the ways of wiki.’ The Wikipedia (along with wikis that take it as their model) is exerting influence the other way, toward a glitzier appearance and a more traditionally–structured web site.
Early wikis spurned indices, tables of contents, and site maps, since wikis tend toward a radically flat structure rather than a hierarchical arrangement maps (again, the Wikipedia is producing different expectation of wikis, more like a non-wiki web page). Wiki users readily locate pages by using a Search box rather than a Table of Contents.
Many wiki pages divide themselves into two parts: Document Mode, and Thread mode. In such cases, Document Mode is at the top, and is where the text that hopes to achieve something like permanent status resides, Thread Mode is below that, and consists of conversation among page authors and readers about the text in Document Mode (and related or unrelated issues); it is often a kind of meta-discourse about the content of Document Mode. Individual comments in Document Mode are signed by individual authors. The text of Document Mode is unsigned, as its author is the wiki community. Alternatively, wikis based on the wiki software used by the Wikipedia, or modeled after it, create a “Discussion” page (Thread Mode) separate from the “Article” page (Document Mode).
The Wikipedia separates thread mode-type discourse to a separate page called “Discussion.” Nevertheless, in either case, wikis are a site for the production of documents, as well as for reflection on and discussion of those documents.
Because changes are archived by the wiki software, it is always possible to revert to an earlier version of a page. This is useful if a page has been either vandalized or poorly revised.
Thus, wikis create a space for radically collaborative writing, reflection about writing, and an easily accessed archive of drafts. One common metaphor for wiki’s collaborative enterprise is Barn Raising.
Questions for Wikis and Rhetoric/Composition:
Most writing programs and instructors make use of student collaboration in some form, from peer review of drafts to collaboratively-authored texts. Some programs and instructors take as their fundamental starting point the social constructedness of texts. Furthermore, wikis work by consensus. The community that forms around any given wiki, and that has a stake in it, will eventually arrive at agreement about the contents of its pages—or they will agree to disagree. So, here are some questions for potential discussion on the list:
- Are wikis, which foreground collaboration, "the next big thing," in electronic modes of discourse, or just one more menu item in the never-ending buffet of new technologies available to writing programs?
- In less binary terms, what particular, limited opportunities and challenges to student writing and writing program administration might wikis offer? How can you imagine using a wiki in your course or program?
- Does a wiki document’s implicit “never-finished” status hold promise for helping students experience a more open-ended writing process the kind typically constructed in a classroom?
- What are the implications of a “rhetoric of consensus” for writing programs and writing classes in a culture accustomed to majority rule and rugged individualism?
- What are the implications of wiki-enabled collaboration for theories of discourse production? Discourse reception?
- Some advocates see wikis as another chance to fulfill the participatory and egalitarian ideal of the Internet. Detractors see it as an invitation to chaos. How do wikis look to you?
A Brief, Suggestive List of Public Wikis
Teaching Composition
