Security
"Edit war" redirects here. Not to be confused with Edit conflict. For
Wikipedia's policy on edit warring, see Wikipedia:Edit warring.
Trolling and cybervandalism on wikis, where content is changed to
something deliberately incorrect or a hoax, offensive material or
nonsense is added, or content is maliciously removed, can be a
major problem. On larger wiki sites it is possible for such changes to
go unnoticed for a long period.
In addition to using the approach of soft security for protecting
themselves, larger wikis may employ sophisticated methods, such
as bots that automatically identify and revert vandalism. For
example, on Wikipedia, the bot ClueBot NG uses machine
learning to identify likely harmful changes, and reverts these
changes within minutes or even seconds.[35]
Disagreements between users over the content or appearance of
pages may cause edit wars, where competing users repetitively
change a page back to a version that they favor. Some wiki software
allows administrators to prevent pages from being editable until a
decision has been made on what version of the page would be most
appropriate.[3]
Some wikis may be subject to external structures of governance
which address the behavior of persons with access to the system,
for example in academic contexts.[25]
Harmful external links
As most wikis allow the creation of hyperlinks to other sites and
services, the addition of malicious hyperlinks, such as sites infected
with malware, can also be a problem. For example, in 2006 a
German Wikipedia article about the Blaster Worm was edited to
include a hyperlink to a malicious website, and users of vulnerable
Microsoft Windows systems who followed the link had their systems
infected with the worm.[3] Some wiki engines offer
a blacklist feature which prevents users from adding hyperlinks to
specific sites that have been placed on the list by the wiki's
administrators.
Communities
Applications
The home page of the English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis on
the World Wide Web[36] and ranks in the top 10 among all Web sites
in terms of traffic.[37] Other large wikis include
the WikiWikiWeb, Memory Alpha, Wikivoyage, and
previously Susning.nu, a Swedish-language knowledge
base. Medical and health-related wiki examples include Ganfyd, an
online collaborative medical reference that is edited by medical
professionals and invited non-medical experts. [38] Many
wiki communities are private, particularly within enterprises. They
are often used as internal documentation for in-house systems and
applications. Some companies use wikis to allow customers to help
produce software documentation.[39] A study of corporate wiki users
found that they could be divided into "synthesizers" and "adders" of
content. Synthesizers' frequency of contribution was affected more
by their impact on other wiki users, while adders' contribution
frequency was affected more by being able to accomplish their
immediate work.[40] From a study of thousands of wiki deployments,
Jonathan Grudin concluded careful stakeholder analysis and
education are crucial to successful wiki deployment. [41]
In 2005, the Gartner Group, noting the increasing popularity of
wikis, estimated that they would become mainstream collaboration
tools in at least 50% of companies by 2009.[42][needs update] Wikis
can be used for project management.[43][44][unreliable source] Wikis
have also been used in the academic community for sharing and
dissemination of information across institutional and international
boundaries.[45] In those settings, they have been found useful for
collaboration on grant writing, strategic planning, departmental
documentation, and committee work.[46] In the mid-2000s, the
increasing trend among industries toward collaboration placed a
heavier impetus upon educators to make students proficient in
collaborative work, inspiring even greater interest in wikis being
used in the classroom.[3]
Wikis have found some use within the legal profession and within
the government. Examples include the Central Intelligence
Agency's Intellipedia, designed to share and collect intelligence
assessments, DKosopedia, which was used by the American Civil
Liberties Union to assist with review of documents about the
internment of detainees in Guantánamo Bay;[47] and the wiki of
the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, used to
post court rules and allow practitioners to comment and ask
questions. The United States Patent and Trademark
Office operates Peer-to-Patent, a wiki to allow the public to
collaborate on finding prior art relevant to the examination of
pending patent applications. Queens, New York has used a wiki to
allow citizens to collaborate on the design and planning of a local
park. Cornell Law School founded a wiki-based legal dictionary
called Wex, whose growth has been hampered by restrictions on
who can edit.[32]
In academic contexts, wikis have also been used as project
collaboration and research support systems.[48][49]
City wikis
A city wiki or local wiki is a wiki used as a knowledge base and social
network for a specific geographical locale.[50][51][52] The term city
wiki is sometimes also used for wikis that cover not just a city, but a
small town or an entire region. Such a wiki contains information
about specific instances of things, ideas, people and places. Such
highly localized information might be appropriate for a wiki targeted
at local viewers, and could include:
Details of public establishments such as public houses, bars,
accommodation or social centers
Owner name, opening hours and statistics for a specific shop
Statistical information about a specific road in a city
Flavors of ice cream served at a local ice cream parlor
A biography of a local mayor and other persons
Growth factors
A study of several hundred wikis in 2008 showed that a relatively
high number of administrators for a given content size is likely to
reduce growth;[53] access controls restricting editing to registered
users tends to reduce growth; a lack of such access controls tends
to fuel new user registration; and that a higher ratio of
administrators to regular users has no significant effect on content
or population growth.[54]
Legal environment
Joint authorship of articles, in which different users participate in
correcting, editing, and compiling the finished product, can also
cause editors to become tenants in common of the copyright,
making it impossible to republish without permission of all co-
owners, some of whose identities may be unknown due to
pseudonymous or anonymous editing.[3] Some copyright issues can
be alleviated through the use of an open content license. Version 2
of the GNU Free Documentation License includes a specific provision
for wiki relicensing, and Creative Commons licenses are also
popular. When no license is specified, an implied license to read and
add content to a wiki may be deemed to exist on the grounds of
business necessity and the inherent nature of a wiki.
