The original wiki, created by Ward Cunningham, was 200 lines of Perl. Soon after, people discovered ways to make wiki software in roughly 200 characters (that’s about 4 lines) of Perl and other languages. The power of such a simple technology is self-evident by now. But how can so little do so much?
As we previewed on Tuesday, Ward spoke at CHIFOO last night about the design principles that characterize the technology he invented. There was a great turn-out, and we’re indebted to CHIFOO and Jeanne Turner from IXDA Portland for setting up the evening. For another great recap, be sure to check out what William Hertling had to say.
Ward describes 11 design principles inherent in wiki. These traits are what make it what Ward calls a “meme vector.”
- Open: Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.
- Incremental: It must be both possible and useful to cite unwritten pages.
- Organic: The structure of the site is expected to grow and evolve with the community that uses it.
- Mundane: A small number of conventions provide all necessary formatting.
- Universal: The mechanisms of editing and organizing are the same as those of writing so that any writer is automatically and editor and organizer.
- Overt: The formatted and printed output will suggest the input required to reproduce it.
- Unified: Page names will be drawn from a flat space so that no additional context is required to interpret them.
- Precise: Pages will be titled with sufficient precision to avoid most name clashes, typically by forming noun phrases.
- Tolerant: All input will produce output even when the output is not likely to be that desired. (i.e. No error messages if your markup is wrong.)
- Observable: Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor.
- Convergent: Ambiguity and duplication can be removed by finding and citing similar or related content.
For more on Wiki Design Principles, be sure to check out the related page on the original wiki, or download this PDF of his slides on the subject at WikiSym in 2006.
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Wiki is the great share environment for years and years. I find wiki so useful resource.What kind of subject is searched on Wiki,it is possible to reach to indormation.
Thanks for Wiki’s Founders.
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