From Wiki

MediaWiki is a great wiki software package. It enables user-contributed content to thrive. Wikipedia is probably the best example of a successful wiki site. Many laud user-generated content to be the next media. And a wiki is one of those concepts used to describe the ever elusive definition of Web 2.0.

vBulletin is one of the best Bulletin Board (Forums) software in use nowadays. There are other packages out there on the web, and each software package has its pros and cons, its fans and detractors. But as this survey shows, vBulletin is by far the most popular.

A wiki is a great place for user-contributed content. But its discussion features are often on the weak side.

On the other hand a forum is a great discussion place, where members can express their opinions, but it is difficult to centralize information about any subject, since most of the time it is scattered on hundreds of threads, sometimes spanning large period of times.

This is the reason why many community admins are looking for ways to integrate these two software packages to obtain the strengths of both while complimenting each other.

There are several challenges when trying to integrate MediaWiki with vBulletin. Some of these challenges are:

• User login integration. When a users visit your website, they shouldn't need to register/log in twice (once on the wiki and then on the forums) to navigate and contribute to your site. This usually is reason enough to inhibit a user from participating and/or staying in your community.
• User group management. A forum requires admins and moderators, an so does a wiki. If the User group management is not integrated, then admins have to do their job twice.
• Skin integration. Usually it is highly desired to keep the same look and feel between the two system. There is no point in having spent a lot of time and money customizing your forums to be lost on the members the moment they go to a wiki page.

Seamless integration between MediaWiki and vBulletin can be accomplished by vbWiki Pro.

Template:Copyedit Template:otheruses Template:wiktionary A wiki is a website designed to allow multiple authors to add, remove, and edit content.<ref> The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, On Term: "Wiki". </ref> The multiple author capability of wikis makes them effective tools for mass collaborative authoring.<ref>Ward Cunningham's original description of Wiki. </ref> Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, is one of the best known wikis.<ref name="Britannica"/>

Several characteristics of wikis facilitate the multiple author capability. The most frequently used of these are:

Ease of editing: traditionally this has been with wikitext, a markup language, which is easier to use than html or xhtml. However, many wikis now provide a simple WYSIWYG editor, which allows non-technical or occasional contributors to edit wiki pages.

Review and revert: often other authors will not agree to a change that has been made to a wiki page. Wikis usually provide a system in which authors can review changes to pages and revert to older versions if this is appropriate.

Navigation systems: a traditional hierarchical navigation menu often does not work for wikis because multiple authors create and delete pages. To overcome this problem wikis often rely on internal links, searches and tags to aid navigation.

Permissions: open access to wikis allows entry by spammers and vandals. Most wikis allow administrators to assign different levels of permissions to visitors to view, edit, create or delete pages. Assigning permissions helps prevent misuse of wikis but can also discourage genuine contributors.

Discussion pages: authors frequently need to discuss page contents to reach consensus on page contents. Most wikis facilitate this by having a discussion page attached to each wiki page or some other system for discussion.

[edit] History

WikiWikiWeb was the first such site to be called a wiki.<ref name="Britannica"/> Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in 1994, and installed it on Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the so-called "Wiki Wiki" Chance RT-52 shuttle bus line that runs between the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web."<ref name="cunningham" /><ref name="history">Template:cite web</ref> Wiki Wiki is a reduplication of wiki, a Hawaiian-language word for fast. The word "wiki" (IPA /wiːkiː wiːkiː/) is a shorter form of wiki wiki .

Cunningham was in part inspired by the Apple's HyperCard program developed by the idea of Vannevar Bush. Bush had designed a system allowing users to create virtual “card stacks” supporting links among the various cards. Cunningham developed Bush's idea by allowing users to "comment on and change one another's text".<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="hypercard"> Template:cite web</ref> In the early 2000s, wikis were increasingly adopted in the enterprise as collaborative software. Common uses included project communication, intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users. Today some companies use wikis as their only collaborative software and as a replacement for static intranets. There may be greater use of wikis behind firewalls than on the public Internet.

On March 15, 2007, wiki entered the Oxford English Dictionary Online.<ref name="OED1"> Template:cite web</ref><ref name="OED"> Template:cite web</ref>

Wiki is sometimes interpreted as the "backronym" for what I know is, which describes the knowledge contribution, storage, and the exchange function.<ref name="backronym">Template:cite web</ref>

[edit] Trustworthiness

Critics of open-source wiki systems argue that these systems could be easily tampered with; while proponents argue that the community of users can catch malicious content and correct it.<ref name="Britannica"/> Lars Aronsson, a data systems specialist, summarizes the controversy as follows:

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