The word "wiki" comes from Hawaiian expression "wiki wiki" == to do something quickly. The term was coined by inventor of the first wiki, http://c2.com by Ward Cunningham in 1994-1995.

Mediawiki is by most metrics the most successful wiki implementation.
Wikimedia Foundation wikis as of 2013
Uncyclopedia is an endless parody of Wikipedia and more

Wikicode is perhaps the quickest way for a human to enter hypertext. There are more than one wikicode in existence but quite naturally the one used in Mediawiki, the software that runs Wikipedia and many other wikis.


How to wiki?

In mediawiki an external URL will have a small symbol after it to indicate a link not internal to the wiki or reached via the interwiki mechanism.

Notice that internal links and interwiki links have slightly different color with the interwiki links being lighter in hue. If unable to tell just hover over the link and see where it leads to.

Use [[w:Fairtrade]] to link to Wikipedia's article on fairtrade and [[w:fr:Commerce équitable]] to link to the article in the French Wikipedia as simple as that. ( works for all languages, just insert the correct lang code )

This wiki has InstantCommons activated so all Wikimedia Commons images can be used on this wiki with the normal syntax: [[File:Filename.png|thumb|right|100px|Caption text]]

Lists of wikis

WikiStudy list of wikis

Wikimedia Foundation wikis

  • Wikivoyage.org - A content creator fork back as Wikitravel went corporate.