These are taken from Ward Cunninghams’s Presentation at the WikiSym2006 (pdf)
Wards Wiki Design Principles
- Open - Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.
- Incremental - It must be both possible and useful to cite unwritten pages. (incomplete)
- Organic - The structure of the site is expected to grow and evolve with the community that uses it. (co-evolution)
- Mundane - A small number of conventions provide all necessary formatting.(undistracted)
- Universal - The mechanisms of editing and organizing are the same as those of writing so that any writer is automatically and editor and organizer.
- Overt - The formatted and printed output will suggest the input required to reproduce it. (concrete)
- Unified - Page names will be drawn from a flat space so that no additional context is required to interpret them. (vocabulary)
- Precise - Pages will be titled with sufficient precision to avoid most name clashes, typically by forming noun phrases. (happy accidents)
- Tolerant - All input will produce output even when the output is not likely to be that desired.
- Observable - Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor.
- Convergent - Ambiguity and duplication can be removed by finding and citing similar or related content.
see also http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples
Wards definition of Wikis vs. Blogs
A wiki is a work made by a community. The blogosphere is a community made by its works. (Wikizens can come and go without changing a wiki’s identity)
Angela Beesleys definition of a Wiki
I think of a wiki as a wiki only when it’s run by and editable by a community and not a single person. Using wiki software to create a site isn’t enough to make that site a wiki.
MeatBall’s definition of a wiki
We’ve been considering what makes a wiki over at
MeatBall:WhatIsaWiki, and boiled it down to: open, organic and observable. Discussion is most welcome!