What's a Wiki?

Back in 1994, Ward Cunningham, the father of the wiki,  needed a collaborative work environment that would allow all the members of his project team to post  content in a single spot, would allow members to easily edit the content, and would allow all members to see the edits.   He created a wiki: "a collection of webpages that anyone can edit" (Woods and Thoeny, 2007).  These pages can be linked together.  The interface is easy so that ANYONE can edit the pages without having to understand how to write in html code.  There is no webslave to change wiki content.

Wikis encourage collaboration.  Members are encouraged to add new pages to capture their content, and to edit existing pages.  Wikis encourage work-in-progress. 

The most famous wiki is Wikipedia.  Members can add content and edit any page in Wikipedia.

For a quick tutorial on wikis and how they work take a look at the "Wikis in Plain English" video on Youtube.com.

As for the name "wiki".... Ward called his creation WikiWikiWeb.  "WikiWiki" is Hawaiian for "quick".  WikiWikiWeb eventually was shortened to "wiki", and name was used to name the wiki concept.

Reference

Woods, D., & Thoeny, P. (2007) Wikis for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing.