Note: This is an official explanation.
What is a wiki?
A good description of a wiki can be found on
[»http://www.wikipedia.org»], perhaps the most popular and well-known wiki on the Internet:
A wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing. In essence, a wiki is a simplification of the process of creating [web pages] combined with a system that records each individual change that occurs over time, so that at any time, a page can be reverted to any of its previous states.
How is this site different?
You may wonder how a page that can be edited by anyone can stand up to Internet pranksters. Contrary to this expectation, Wikipedia was recently found to be almost as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica (see the Nature study at:
[»http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html»]). We started with the successful wiki concept, and built additional functionality to help make pranking even simpler to spot and remove.
Text is color-coded by user class
- When a new or anonymous user makes changes to a how-to, his or her changes are immediately visible, but in orange text rather than black. Similarly, more respected community members can make changes in green. Only the most respected community members make changes in black. Take a look at the illustration on the right. You can immediately tell what sort of user posted each change, and evaluate the information accordingly. We call the people who can make green changes "editors", and the people who can make black changes "admins".
- In case you don't trust the colored changes on a page, you can choose to see the "admin version" of that page. The admin version is what the page looked like before users and editors made their changes.
- Admins control the admin version, and also approve new how-tos. Find out more in [ Admin Expectations].
- Finally, each car model is its own community with its own editors and admins; a user who is an admin for Honda Civics is not necessarily an admin for Mazda RX-7s.
See Also...
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