Wikiverse
The wikiverse is the collection of all publicly available wikis. Members of the wikiverse comprise of everyone who regularly edits wikis. There are over 46,000 wikis,[1] many of which are indexed by WikiApiary in a shallow manner, but also by WikiIndex to a much smaller but more detailed extent.
There have been multiple attempts to create a wiki-specific search engine for all wikis, including by Larry Sanger, but no such thing has lasted as of 2025 (enterprising individuals here's your chance, albeit you probably won't make much money).
History[edit | edit source]
Early self-hosted wikis[edit | edit source]
The first wiki was launched in 1995 as WikiWikiWeb using wiki software of the same name. It eventually moved to Fedwiki ("federated wiki") wiki software. It is currently read-only.
Not much published history exists on wikis before the year 2000, but Usenet shows a number of active wikis during this time, including the GNUstepWiki in 1998.[2] There was TCL programming language collaborative wiki called "Tcl'ers Wiki" that existed at least before 1999.[3] Also, there was a Haskell programming language wiki that existed at least before 1999.[4]
A sister site to WikiWikiWeb named MeatballWiki formed in year 2000, as a repository of information about internet culture, internet collaboration, wiki concepts, and forgotten wikis. It is notable for being still online and editable.
During the year 2000, many more wikis were launched, including an Oracle Wiki,[5] a Java progamming wiki[6] an Erlang wiki.[7]
Wikiweb wiki farm[edit | edit source]
The bulk of the wiki explosion in 2000 was facilitated by the creation of the wikiweb.com wiki farm. This wiki farm hosted over 503 individual wikis by the end of 2000.[8] By October 2000, the wiki farm included wikis beyond programming and software topics, including wikis about gardening, golf, stocks, Catholicism, Christmas, Indian foods, rationalism, and skepticism, among many other topics.[8]
Wikipedia[edit | edit source]
During 1999 Richard Stallman proposed using a wiki as a general purpose encyclopedia in an online paper. The project was to eventually become GNUpedia. GNUpedia.org was then purchased by Jimbo Wales. Later, Jimbo showed the GNUpedia architects Larry Sanger's Wikipedia, launched in 2001, which impressed the GNUpedia architects to endorse the wiki as suitable enough for their purposes. Jimbo Wales, also a bureaucrat at Wikipedia, proceeded to give Wikipedia administration positions to various Usenet trolls and people he knew from an Ayn Rand mailing list he frequented.
MeatballWiki accuses Wikipedia of never being an encyclopedia and instead perhaps an attempt at being a new "Library of Alexandria".
Chinese wikis[edit | edit source]
Large Chinese wikis soon followed Wikipedia, quickly outpacing Wikipedia in number of articles, including Baike and Baidu Baike.
Wikiverse hubs[edit | edit source]
There are various hubs of the Wikiverse, comprising a decentralized, loosly connected social network. Users who begin on one wiki may migrate to others but retain their social bonds, reaching out when they may need WikiHelp or to just annoy.
Major hubs of the wikiverse include the largest wikis "Baidu Baike" and "Baike". Smaller hubs include Wikimedia associated websites and Fandom.com. Users of subject specific wikis may share social connections across similar subject specific wikis, such as wikis devoted to politics or wikis devoted to gardening.
Wikiverse slang[edit | edit source]
- Barn raising - When multiple wiki members coordinate to accomplish a goal at the same time, especially to welcome a new member. The term refers to historic barn raising when a community would gather to help build someones barn. Notably, a single person cannot raise a barn.[9]
- Certain wikis also engage in rewarding stellar user activity with pictures of barn stars, which historically used to hang on established American and German barns[10]
- Interwiki - Load balancing by distributing articles from a large wiki to different servers.[11] Alternatively, the Mediawiki definition is of links to other wikis disguised as regular wikilinks.
- Meatspace - slang for the real world.[12]
- Mob rule - When a highly active or self-appointed section of a wiki acts as a police force
- Police force - When a designated section of a wiki acts as a police force
- Self policing - When all members of a wiki act as a police force[13]
- Vandal - Someone who inserts spam or deletes content at random
- Wiki champion - The resident expert of how a particular wiki operates, particularly in small business wikis[14]
- Less creatively called a WikiSysop or
- WikiAdmin
- Wiki dragon - Makes bold, dramatic edits, and spends hours researching material. Also edits in 'strifing runs' or a large number of small edits. Can annoy various other wiki members for aforementioned activity.
- Wiki farm - Multiple wikis hosted by a single operator, often on a single server, sometimes under the same domain. Sometimes uses Interwiki links between wikis if using Mediawiki software.
- Wiki forum - A mailing list between members of wiki implementers.[15] Alternatively, a user-registration phpBB style forum for extended conversation about a particular wiki.
- Wiki gnome - Tidies up individual pages with short edits, such as fixing grammar, syntax, and linking pages
- Wikilinks - Links to other wiki pages on a single wiki
Technology[edit | edit source]
Some wikis use relational databases. Others use flat files.
Common platforms include MediaWiki and DokuWiki, among others.
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ https://www.wikiapiary.com/wiki/Main_Page
- ↑ https://groups.google.com/g/gnu.gnustep.discuss/c/GIAkOrSw8uQ/m/gyW8FcTi46AJ
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/19991115153019/http://mini.net/cgi-bin/wikit/
- ↑ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.functional/c/8A5hgRWIAjI/m/ArSIKhh9bOsJ
- ↑ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.databases.oracle.tools/c/lJOLFt4mhpE/m/sd9halmyuQYJ
- ↑ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.java.softwaretools/c/TLFUNEdaIwE/m/aeTirGmpqlgJ
- ↑ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.functional/c/YIM8HxYfZak/m/0xEqKfR62AkJ
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20001010160343/http://www.wikiweb.com/wikiweb.cgi?useCase=WwSystemSearchUc&invokeUcWith=invokeSearch&searchString=e
- ↑ http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/BarnRaising
- ↑ http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/BarnStar
- ↑ http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/InterWiki
- ↑ http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/MeatSpace
- ↑ http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/SelfPolicing
- ↑ http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/WikiChampion
- ↑ http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/WikiForum