Anyone who’s been watching the news will have heard about Wikileaks by now. Wikipedia shares the generic “wiki-” prefix in its name, but there’s no relation. Occasionally even major news sources like the BBC get this wrong, which can lead to serious confusion, even when it’s quickly fixed.

If anyone has a claim to the word “wiki”, it would be the Hawaiian people. In the Hawaiian language, wiki means “quick”. The words “wiki wiki” on a shuttle bus in Honolulu inspired software engineer Ward Cunningham to name a revolutionary piece of software – the “WikiWikiWeb” – in 1995. This software allowed people to instantly edit web pages, collaboratively.

Wikipedia was created six years later, based on the same principles. By that time, the word “wiki” was used already by a ton of different wiki software implementations. Today, you can go to the “WikiMatrix” website to compare them all. They have names like Wikidot, TWiki, or Wikispaces. Moreover, there are many, many content websites that use “wiki” in their names. Among them are Wikihow, Wikitravel, WikiAnswers, and Wikia.

Most of these projects are completely unrelated to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which was founded by Jimmy Wales in 2003. The Wikimedia Foundation operates a number of other free knowledge projects: Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wikinews, and Wikiversity. It also organizes and supports development of the MediaWiki open source software.

The names of Wikimedia’s projects are trademarked. The word “wiki” isn’t: anyone can use it. Wikileaks and most other projects with “wiki” in their name have no relationship with us. If you see news organizations making this error, please email them or post a comment pointing to this blog post.

Greetings from Palo Alto, California!

Some folks from Wikimedia have joined the ranks of numerous wiki enthusiasts at this year’s Recent Changes Camp.  Big questions and conversations circulate…

• who wikis?
• how can we wiki better?
• what will wikipedia look like in 20 years?
• how to retain and grow users and volunteers

Among dozens of great discussions and presentations, Ed Chi of PARC talked about some of their recent research on the users of Wikipedia, how they edit, and what that looks like – including the WikiDashboard.

Lots of photos on the Wikimedia Commons.

The camp continues tomorrow!  Still time to drop by. Thanks to Socialtext, Wikihow, Aboutus, WIkia, SolSeed.net, and Atlassian – and to all the volunteers who are making it happen.

Jay Walsh, Head of Communications

I received an email recently inviting me to RecentChangesCamp 2008, which is, from what I have seen a gathering of people into all things wiki.  After one of my wiki-sprites (thanks Alex) did some research, I was able to find information on a previous RCC at RecentChangesCamp 2007 — Portland, Oregon.

Its description is as follows:

RecentChangesCamp was born from the intersection of wiki and OpenSpace – a very wiki-like way of organizing gatherings. A lot of cool people into wiki, community and collaboration will be there – what do you want to talk with them about? Every participant is invited to lead their own sessions; the guideline is to take responsibility for what you love. In addition to general and technical conversations about – and actual coding on – wikis and other software, session topics from past RCCs have covered subjects from art to social organizing to philanthropy, playing a creative conversation game, and individual & group coding practices. See the past conference wikis for more complete lists and session notes.

Anyone and everyone is invited to attend. You will especially enjoy Recent Changes Camp, if you happen to be any of the the following:

* Member of any open wiki community or someone who uses wikis at work, school or in any other context
* Interested in community, action, collaboration, creativity or any other activity in which the self-organizing power of wiki might be helpful
* Interested in the OpenCulture and/or OpenTechnology movements
* Interested in knowledge creation and sharing knowledge
* A generally curious and inquisitive person

It’s scheduled to take place in Palo Alto, California, on May 9-11, 2008. More information can be gathered from their site,
http://rcc2008.blueoxen.net/.

RecentChangesCamp is open to the public. Everyone can attend.

If you’d like us to post your wiki or free culture related event, by all means, send us an email or leave a comment on this post!

Cary Bass, Volunteer Coordinator