WikiWikiWeb

From Freepedia

The WikiWikiWeb, or simply WikiWiki or Wiki (with a capital 'W'), is the first ever wiki (a collection of reader-modifiable Web pages). It accompanies the Portland Pattern Repository (PPR) on c2.com and is located at c2.com/cgi/wiki. The term wiki that is used to refer to other similar groups of modifiable Web pages, e.g. Wikipedia, came from this original wiki.

In order to make the exchange of ideas between programmers easier, Ward Cunningham installed the WikiWikiWeb on his company Cunningham & Cunningham's Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995. Cunningham named the WikiWikiWeb that way because he remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the so-called "Wiki-Wiki" shuttle bus line that runs between the airport's terminals and is covered by Chance RT-52 buses which are owned by the State of Hawaii and operated by Airport Group International. "Wiki-Wiki" is a reduplication of "wiki", a Hawaiian-language word for fast. Cunningham's idea was to make the WikiWikiWeb's pages quickly editable by its users, so he initially thought about calling it "QuickWeb", but later changed his mind and dubbed it "WikiWikiWeb".

The name Ward's Wiki (or, in CamelCase, WardsWiki) is also used for the WikiWikiWeb, but has many times negative connotations due to its suggestion that Ward Cunningham maintains strict ownership and control over the entire community, a role which he actively avoids. Other names have been suggested to try to avoid ambiguity with the generic concept of a wiki, and to reflect the growing amount of non-pattern related content. The term C2 Wiki is also used.

Whichever term is used, the WikiWikiWeb should not be confused with the PPR, since the WikiWikiWeb is just a complement to the repository. As explained on the WikiWikiWeb's HowToCiteWiki page:

This wiki and the pages in it are a feature of the Portland Pattern Repository, published by Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc., Portland, Oregon [...].

The PPR itself predated the WikiWikiWeb, and includes some static pages (pages that don't belong to the WikiWikiWeb).

The WikiWikiWeb's WelcomeVisitors page contains the following description:

This wiki's primary focus is PeopleProjectsAndPatterns in SoftwareDevelopment. However, it is much more than just an InformalHistoryOfProgrammingIdeas. It started there, but the theme has created a culture and DramaticIdentity all of its own. All Wiki content is WorkInProgress. Most of all, this is a forum where people share ideas! It changes as people come and go. If you are looking for authoritative information, try WikiPedia. All the information here is subjective.

The WikiWikiWeb and its designated sister sites

Site	Pages	Founder
WikiWikiWeb	31501	Howard Cunningham
WhyClublet	4777	Richard Drake
MeatBallWiki	4279	Clifford Adams, Sunir Shah
WikiBase	360	Howard Cunningham
TheAdjunct	249	Earle Martin
FitWiki	212	Howard Cunningham
GreenCheese		Peter Merel
TheReformSociety		Peter Merel

The WikiWikiWeb as a precursor to other online communities

The WikiWikiWeb plays an important historical role on the Worldwide Web and the Internet, because of its influence on other online communities. The WikiWikiWeb's focus on specialized programming makes its content relatively unintelligible to people outside the programming sphere, but, neverless, editors (so-called "wiki citizens" or "wikizens") and visitors and readers of the WikiWikiWeb took the idea of making pages user-modifiable outside the WikiWikiWeb and created their own new wiki engines (programs which run wikis) and wikis.

Wiki communities outside the WikiWikiWeb implemented their wiki engines to create wikis focused on content other than programming. The versatility of wikis and their multiple applications is what subsequently made them popular in the Internet's communities.

Probably the most famous example of the WikiWikiWeb's legacy is Wikipedia. A WikiWikiWeb user, programmer Ben Kovitz of San Diego, California, introduced the WikiWikiWeb to Larry Sanger of the Internet company Bomis on the evening of January 2, 2001. Back then, Bomis was working on the online encyclopedia Nupedia, but that project turned out to fail, so Sanger came up with the idea of making an open encyclopedia running on UseModWiki, an indirect clone of the WikiWikiWeb's engine. Sanger presented the idea to Jimmy Wales, then the head of Bomis, and he agreed. The UseModWiki-based encyclopedia came to be known as "Wikipedia". Wikipedia's focus on all-around knowledge, as opposed to other wikis, and the June 2003 spin-off from Bomis of Wikimedia, a nonprofit organization dedicated just to Wikipedia and its sister wikis, is what made it grow slowly but steadily on the Internet.