A wiki is a website where many users can create, edit and link pages directly in the browser, with each change recorded in a revision history. The word comes from the Hawaiian "wiki wiki", meaning quick. Wikipedia is the best-known example.
Why it matters
Wikis make shared knowledge easy to build and maintain. Teams use them for documentation, onboarding and internal how-to guides, and communities use them for fan knowledge bases. Because every edit is versioned, mistakes and vandalism can be reverted, and readers can see who changed what. Quality depends on the community: editing rules, permissions and review keep pages accurate.
Example
A software team keeps a wiki page called "Deploy checklist". After an outage, an engineer adds a step to verify the health check. The history shows the change and its author, and a teammate can restore the earlier version with one click if the edit turns out to be wrong.
Common mistakes
- Treating a wiki as authoritative without checking sources or the edit history.
- Allowing anyone to edit without moderation or access control, which invites vandalism and spam.
- Letting pages go stale. An outdated internal wiki can be worse than none.
Related
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