Wiki engine

Any wiki engine (hereinafter, the Engine) is software that is designed to support creation, collaborative editing, storage, and usage of hyper-linked documents. The editing usually occurs through a web browser. The Engine that is ready to be installed is called wiki software; the Engine that is installed, usually on one or more application servers, is called a wiki application.

Usage

Collaboration tool

Theoretically, any collaborative development of documents can occur in three ways:

1. Exchange of ideas and compiling a unified document.
2. Exchange of an actual document under development.
3. Collaborative work on the same document.

Areas of applications

There are essentially three types of usage for wiki software: public-facing wikis with a potentially large community of readers and editors, private enterprise wikis for data management by corporations and other organizations, and personal wikis, meant to be used by a single person to manage notes, and usually run on a desktop. Some wiki software is specifically geared for one of the usage types, while other software can be used for all three, but contains functionality, either in its core or through plugins, that help with one or more of the usage types.

Software that is specifically designed for running personal wikis includes Tomboy, WikidPad, PmWiki, and ConnectedText (now discontinued). Other, more general, wiki applications have components geared for individual users, including MoinMoin (which offers a "DesktopEdition"[9]), and TiddlyWiki.

Publicly-open wikis

Public wikis are wikis that can be read by anyone; usually, though not always, the contents can be edited by anyone as well, though sometimes registration is required. Among public wikis, MediaWiki is the dominant software: it powers the world's most popular (as per August, 2015) public wiki,[2] Wikipedia (free), as well as the most popular wiki farm, Wikia (commercial), and it is the most popular software in use on other public wikis as well.[3] Other wiki engines used regularly for public wikis include MoinMoin and PmWiki, along with many others.[3]

Other Internet websites, based on wiki software, include encyclopedies such as Sensei's Library and WikiTree.

Enterprise wikis

Enterprise wiki software is software intended to be used in a corporate (or organizational) context,[4] especially to enhance internal knowledge sharing. It tends to have a greater emphasis on features like access control, integration with other software, and document management. Most proprietary wiki applications specifically market themselves as enterprise solutions, including Confluence, Socialtext, Jive, Traction TeamPage, and Nuclino. In addition, some open source wiki applications also describe themselves as enterprise solutions, including XWiki, Foswiki[5] and TWiki.[6] Some open-source wiki applications, though they do not specifically bill themselves as enterprise solutions, have marketing materials geared for enterprise users, like Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware[7] and MediaWiki.[8] Many other wiki applications have also been used within enterprises.

Among the many companies and government organizations that use wikis internally are Adobe Systems, Amazon.com, Intel, Microsoft, and the United States intelligence community.

Within organizations, wikis may either add to or replace centrally managed content management systems. Their decentralized nature allows them, in principle, to disseminate needed information across an organization more rapidly and more cheaply than a centrally controlled knowledge repository. Wikis can also be used for document management, project management, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and many other kinds of data management.

Features of wikis which can serve an enterprise include:

   Entering information into quick and easy-to-create pages, including hyperlinks to other corporate information systems like people directories, CMS, applications, and thus to facilitate the buildup of useful knowledge bases.
   Reduces e-mail overload. Wikis allow all relevant information to be shared by people working on a given project. Conversely, only the wiki users interested in a given project need look at its associated wiki pages, in contrast to high-traffic mailing lists which may burden subscribers with many messages, regardless of their relevance. It is also very useful for the project manager to have all the communication stored in one place, which allows them to link the responsibility for every action taken to a particular team member.
   Organizes information. Wikis help users structure information into discoverable and searchable categories. These may arise from users in a bottom-up way. Users can create lists, tables, timelines and other ways of expressing order.
   Builds consensus. Wikis allow structuring the expression of views, on a topic being considered by authors, on the same page. This feature is very useful when writing documentation, preparing presentations, when author opinions differ, and so on.
   Access levels by rights and roles. Users can be denied access to view and/or edit given pages, depending upon their department or role within the organization.
   Knowledge management with comprehensive searches. This includes document management, project management, and knowledge repositories useful during times of employee turnover or retirement.