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Interestingly, "wiki" means (in Hawaiian) "fast" (used by Ward Cunningham in '95 for "very fast web").

So, no, the process may not be fast. But in topics like "the best competitive sports club in the world", some may prefer to keep intervention more controlled, depending on the general intention.



More recently, "wiki" seems to be a more concrete concept: a collaboratively edited website, managed by its audience [1]. The project references Wikipedia as an inspiration, and I hope it can live up to similar ideals.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki


> collaboratively edited website

Yes, but there are parts of it in terminology awareness gone slightly messy:

in 'wikipedia', the educational part is in '-poedia' ("children", hence "learners"); 'wiki-' reflects the concept that the operation on the content must be apt to be quick - which is exactly the direct interpretation that appears in your parent post («a contact form just to edit an article doesn't really live up to the “wiki” part»).

"Quick" there is not just "free of red tape": I understand the first idea of Cunningham was about distributed access to a relational database for collaborative editing, in the simplest and directmost possible way.

So, 'wiki-' in the current common use could be more like the truncation of 'wikiweb' (already containing interesting convergences of meaning in "web" as "collaboration", not just "network of frontends"). "Wiki-" per se would indicate more the "hassle free" side of the technology.


Sorry, but the second part, "-pedia" comes from "παιδεία", (all-around) education, not "children".


It's the same :) 'paideia', "education", comes from 'pais', "child" - as I wrote, «"children", hence "learners"» (...«the educational part»).

(Note: as I was checking the spelling of 'paedia', see edit below, the statement of pais→paideia also came out in the search results, from wiktionary.org . I suppose it must be quite uncontroversial.)

I suspect that with that '«all-around»' you refer to the left part of 'encyclopedia' as 'enkyklios paideia', "encompassing education".

Edit: but I see, re-reading the post, that I wrote 'poedia' instead of 'paedia'. (I think I am making at least a typo per post in these days. Maybe when the temperatures will return in the 20's...)


Ward Cunningham's wiki at c2.com was a simple user editable wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb

I don't know what all your linguistics analysis is trying to achieve other than disguise the fact that this isn't a wiki.


> trying to achieve

Intellectual curiosity, applied to the care of ideas.

«Disguise»: I have no idea what you are talking about. My only interest on whether the submitted site falls into the category of "wiki" can be linguistic - not about the site itself (of interest respectfully relative).


I manage a small wiki, and would never just open it up to the bots.

But fast is relative, no? E.g., I still use snail mail extensively to keep in touch with my friends.




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