Misplaced Pages

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62-455: The history of wikis began in 1994, when Ward Cunningham gave the name " WikiWikiWeb " to the knowledge base, which ran on his company's website at c2.com, and the wiki software that powered it. The wiki went public in March 1995, the date used in anniversary celebrations of the wiki's origins. c2.com is thus the first true wiki , or a website with pages and links that can be easily edited via

124-1091: A book about wikis, entitled The Wiki Way , and invented the Framework for Integrated Test . Cunningham was a keynote speaker at the first three instances of the WikiSym conference series on wiki research and practice, and also at the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017. He was a keynote speaker at the MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Spring 2024. Cunningham was born in Michigan City, Indiana , on May 26, 1949. He grew up in Highland, Indiana , where he completed high school. Cunningham received his bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary engineering (electrical engineering and computer science) and his master's degree in computer science from Purdue University , graduating in 1978. He

186-430: A corresponding page did not yet exist. This CamelCase convention was used by most wiki software for the first few years of wikis' existence. In 2001, the software UseModWiki , which at the time was in use on Misplaced Pages , switched to allow internal links to be done using standard spelling and double square bracket instead, in order to improve Misplaced Pages's usability. This square bracket syntax has since become more of

248-429: A default convention for internal links within wiki software in general. Ward Cunningham wrote a version of his wiki software meant for public usage, called "Wiki Base". In his announcement, he wrote: "WikiWikiWeb is almost public. Actually, a pretty good clone of it is public at: https://web.archive.org/web/20030801073834/http://c2.com/cgi/wikibase . I've translated almost all of the actual wiki script into HyperPerl ,

310-456: A document, search, run programs from a tree of frames starting at any frame. In KMS, links are one way and are embedded in frames. They may go from any text item, point, graphical entity, or image in the source frame to any destination frame. In addition to links, frame items can also have actions, allowing the use to activate programs that extend the intrinsic functionality of the system. A major distinction between KMS and current web practices

372-500: A free content encyclopedia, was launched in January 2001, and quickly became the most popular wiki, which it remains to this day. Its rise in popularity (it was in the top ten most popular sites in 2007) played a large part in introducing wikis to the general public. There now exist at least hundreds of thousands of wiki websites, and they have become increasingly prevalent in corporations and other organizations. A distant precursor of

434-462: A link to the new page and the message "This page exists only on SisterSites." In 2001, Cunningham and user Bo Leuf published a book, The Wiki Way , which distilled the lessons learned during the collective experience of the first wiki . While many early wiki websites were devoted to the development of open source software, one early wiki was created by the FoxPro user community. The FoxPro Wiki

496-512: A little more widely in a week or so. The URL is http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki . Thanks and best regards Cunningham dates the official start of WikiWikiWeb as March 25, 1995. On May 1, 1995, he sent an email about the website to a number of programmers, which caused an increase in participation. This note was posted to the "Patterns" listserv , a group of software developers gathered under the name " The Hillside Group " to develop Erich Gamma 's use of object-oriented patterns. Cunningham had noticed that

558-450: A loose network. In 1972 Kristo Ivanov published a PhD dissertation on Quality-control of information , containing a theoretical basis for what corresponds to the wiki-idea, in terms of systemic social interaction. Information turns into knowledge as a net of contributions and negotiations converge about a core concept, or entity. The emphasis is on a dynamically documented "agreement in the context of maximum possible disagreement," akin to

620-574: A wiki-literate programming system that I think you will like." Visitors were requested to register on the wiki before they took the Wiki Base code. Cunningham expected users to fold changes back into his editable version, but those who implemented changes generally chose to distribute the modified versions on their own sites. Alternate applications for wikis began to emerge, usually imitating the look-and-feel of WikiWikiWeb/Wiki Base; such applications were originally known as "WikiWikiClones." The first one

682-561: Is a co-founder of Cunningham & Cunningham, a software consultancy he started with his wife. Cunningham has also served as Director of R&D at Wyatt Software and as Principal Engineer in the Tektronix Computer Research Laboratory. He is founder of The Hillside Group and has served as program chair of the Pattern Languages of Programming conference which it sponsors. Cunningham

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744-412: Is a flat-file wiki with a simple code base but many possible extensions. MoinMoin uses the idea of separating the parsers (for parsing the wiki syntax ) from the formatters (for outputting HTML code), with an interface between them, so that new parsers and output formatters can be written. Ward Cunningham Howard G. Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer who developed

806-516: Is archived. It's not quite a chat, still, conversation is possible." The site was immediately popular within the pattern community. Among Cunningham's innovations in creating WikiWikiWeb was the ability to easily link internally between pages; something that was often cumbersome to do in previous intranet and document management systems. Cunningham's solution to this was to automatically link any text expressed in CamelCase ; including text for which

868-466: Is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn…" This vision, though it has been described as predicting the World Wide Web , resembles wikis more than the web in one important way: the system being described is self-contained, not

930-540: Is only one of many possible organizations of technical writing and rarely the best one at that." Cunningham encouraged contributors to "refactor" (rewrite) the ThreadMode discussions into DocumentMode discourse. In practice many pages started out at the top in DocumentMode and degenerated into ThreadMode further down. When ThreadMode became incomprehensible the result was called "ThreadMess." (In most modern wikis

992-539: Is the distinction between regular items and "Annotation Items" (text items prefaced by the "@" characters). Annotation items have the connotation of being peripheral or meta-level, relative to the rest of the contents, making it easy (and apparent) as to what was regular content versus just notes to oneself or comments by others (including by programs). Annotation items with links thus have the connotation of being arbitrary cross-references (a la "See Also...") and thus are not seen by users, and more especially agents, as part of

1054-533: The Venice Beach -based CitizenGlobal, a startup working on crowd-sourced video content, as their chief technology officer and the Co-Creation Czar. He remains "an adviser" with AboutUs. In April 2013, Cunningham left CitizenGlobal to work as a programmer at New Relic . Cunningham is well known for a few widely disseminated ideas which he originated and developed. The most famous among these are

1116-468: The browser , with a reliable version history for each page. He chose "WikiWikiWeb" as the name based on his memories of the " Wiki Wiki Shuttle " at Honolulu International Airport , and because "wiki" is the Hawaiian word for "quick". Wiki software has some conceptual origins in the version control and hypertext systems used for documentation and software in the 1980s, and some actualized origins in

1178-458: The "PortlandPatternRepository." Around the summer of 1999, user Sam Gentile posted the comment "I'm through here" on his user page, and began systematically removing his text from all pages on WikiWikiWeb that he had contributed to. Gentile worked at Microsoft and had been hurt by what he perceived as anti-Microsoft bias on WikiWikiWeb. His deletions led to controversy about whether he had the right to remove his own material, and whether others had

1240-555: The 1970s "Journal" feature of NLS . Its distant ancestors include Vannevar Bush 's proposed " memex " system in 1945, the collaborative hypertext database ZOG in 1972, the NoteCards system from Xerox , the Apple hypertext system HyperCard . As was typical of these earlier systems, Cunningham's motive was technical: to facilitate communication between software developers. Many alternative wiki applications and websites appeared over

1302-539: The KMS data model is that of screen-sized pages (called "frames") interconnected by links . The user had the option (at any time) of switching between a view of a single frame (good for large, landscape-oriented diagrams) or two side-by-side half-screen views (suitable for two portrait-sized pages). Frames are always fixed-size, meaning scrolling is not needed. The frame model is spatial rather than character based, so that text, graphics and images may always be placed anywhere in

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1364-467: The Manifesto for Agile Software Development as a co-author. When asked in a 2006 interview with internetnews.com whether he considered patenting the wiki concept, he explained that he thought the idea "just sounded like something that no one would want to pay money for." Cunningham is interested in tracking the number and location of wiki page edits as a sociological experiment and may even consider

1426-750: The RecentChanges page, annotating each line with a brief description of each change, and posting the result to the ChangeSummary page. This practice was highly time-consuming and rapidly petered out, but was replaced by the "MinorEdit/RecentEdits" feature, designed to reduce the RecentChanges clutter. Between early 1998 and the end of 2000 participation in WikiWikiWeb snowballed, and the disk space consumed by wiki pages more than quadrupled. With increased participation tensions began to appear. In 1998 proponents of Extreme Programming showed up on

1488-538: The Web protocol and code for free. Ward Cunningham started developing the WikiWikiWeb in 1994 as a supplement to the Portland Pattern Repository , a website containing documentation about software design patterns , a particular approach to object-oriented programming . The WikiWikiWeb was intended as a collaborative database, in order to make the exchange of ideas between programmers easier; it

1550-530: The WhyClublet (or "Why?") wiki to host discussion of Christian issues, and Peter Merel created GreenCheeseWiki and The Reform Society to host, respectively, whimsical and political pages. Earle Martin subsequently created a catch-all for C2 off-topic pages called TheAdjunct. Many pages were moved from WikiWikiWeb to these alternative sites, with a stub of the moved page left on the WikiWikiWeb, containing

1612-448: The ZOG team, Donald McCracken and Robert Akscyn , spun off a company from CMU in 1981 and developed an improved version of ZOG called Knowledge Management System (KMS). KMS was a collaborative tool based on direct manipulation , permitting users to modify the contents of frames, freely intermixing text, graphics and images, any of which could be linked to other frames. Because the database

1674-488: The conflict between these two modes has been resolved by putting all document text on the main page of an article, and all discussion text on a talk page.) The use of categories was proposed by user Stan Silver on August 27, 1996. His initial post suggested: "If everyone adds a category and topic to their page, then the category and topic pages themselves can be used as automatic indexes into the pages." Initially Silver had proposed both categories and topics: categories denoted

1736-731: The debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet. Early adopters of the World Wide Web were primarily university-based scientific departments or physics laboratories. In May 1992 appeared ViolaWWW , a graphical browser providing features such as embedded graphics, scripting, and animation. However, the turning point for the World Wide Web was the introduction of the Mosaic graphical browser in 1993, which gained wide popularity due to its strong support of integrated multimedia. In April 1993, CERN agreed that anyone could use

1798-414: The degradation of a wiki page as part of its process to stability. "There are those who give and those who take. You can tell by reading what they write." In 2011, Cunningham created Smallest Federated Wiki , a tool for wiki federation, which applies aspects of software development such as forking to wiki pages. Cunningham has contributed to the practice of object-oriented programming , in particular

1860-451: The deleted text back in again. A vote was taken on the issue, and it was proposed that any major reductions should be pre-announced, with an opportunity for response before action was taken. The longer-term result of the deletions was the formation of WikiWikiWeb "sister sites" later in 2000. Sunir Shah created a wiki called MeatballWiki , intended strictly for wiki-based documentation and discussions. A few months later, Richard Drake created

1922-493: The discussions in talk pages and the results of view history of Misplaced Pages. An indirect precursor of the wiki concept was the ZOG multi-user database system, developed in 1972 by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University . The ZOG interface consisted of text-only frames, each containing a title, a description, a line with standard ZOG commands, and a set of selections ( hypertext links) leading to other frames. Two members of

History of wikis - Misplaced Pages Continue

1984-482: The early clones was CvWiki , developed in 1997 by Peter Merel, which was the first wiki application to have functioning transclusion , backlinks , and "WayBackMode." JWiki (short for JavaWiki), released in 1997, was the first implementation of WikiWikiWeb in the Java language, and the first to be back-ended by a database. It was developed by Ricardo Clements, a former co-worker of Cunningham's. Another early wiki engine

2046-406: The end of 2000. During that time, various innovations were put in place, many suggested by users, to help with navigation and editing. These included: "ThreadMode" was defined as "a form of discussion where our community holds a conversation." It consists of a series of signed comments added down the page in chronological order. Ward Cunningham generally frowned on ThreadMode, writing: "Chronological

2108-483: The first wiki and was a co-author of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development . Termed a pioneer, and innovator, he also helped create both software design patterns and extreme programming . He began coding the WikiWikiWeb in 1994, and installed it on c2.com (the website of his software consulting firm ) on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository . He co-authored (with Bo Leuf )

2170-506: The frame, even overlapping one another. Another way to say this is that empty space in the frame actually denotes space, not (as in many text editors) just the absence of content. Frames being fixed in size scrolling as a form of interaction is eliminated (as the designers felt that scrolling is suboptimal) opting instead for larger aggregates such as documents and programs to be structured as hierarchies (or more generally, lattices) of hypermedia nodes. This flexibility makes it possible to create

2232-438: The hierarchical structure of the hypertext. Another major distinction between KMS and current web practices is the elimination of a separate editor mode. Navigation and editing functionality is always directly available and users can edit any frame for which they have permission. Authors can even protect frames from inadvertent editing even by themselves. Older versions of frames are saved in 'comet-like' linked list so one can see

2294-529: The history (and time spent) for any individual frame (and more generally, those in any tree). Finally, KMS contained a script programming language (akin to JavaScript) which enabled developers and users to extend the system beyond its current functionality. In keeping with the KMS philosophy of 'Everything a frame' (e.g., cursors, fillpatterns, etc., are represented as frames) so programs are also represented as hierarchies of frames; KMS dynamically read and interpreted only those program frames needed at runtime. KMS

2356-470: The larger software-related wikis. Sensei's Library , a wiki dedicated to discussion of the game of Go , was created by Morten G. Pahle and Arno Hollosi in October 2000. For its first few years of operation, it was one of the largest and most active wikis outside Misplaced Pages. Clones of the WikiWikiWeb software began to be developed as soon as Ward Cunningham made the Wiki Base software available online. One of

2418-614: The law, calling it a "misquote that disproves itself by propagating through the internet" and by saying that he "never suggested asking questions by posting wrong answers". Cunningham lives in Beaverton, Oregon . He holds an amateur radio extra class license issued by the Federal Communications Commission . His call sign is K9OX. Cunningham is Nike 's first "Code for a Better World" Fellow. Knowledge Management System The purpose of KMS

2480-399: The next five years. In the meantime, the first wiki, now known as "WardsWiki", evolved as features were added to the software and as the growing body of users developed a unique "wiki culture". By 2000, WardsWiki had developed a great deal of content outside its original stated purpose, which led to the spinoff of content into sister sites, most notably MeatballWiki . The website Misplaced Pages ,

2542-415: The observation that people are quicker to correct a wrong answer than to answer a question. According to Steven McGeady , Cunningham advised him of this on a whim in the early 1980s, and McGeady dubbed this Cunningham's Law. Although originally referring to interactions on Usenet , the law has been used to describe how other online communities work, such as Misplaced Pages. Cunningham relativises his ownership of

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2604-483: The older contents of the listserv tended to get buried under the more recent posts, and he proposed instead to collect ideas in a set of pages which would be collectively edited. Cunningham's post stated: "The plan is to have interested parties write web pages about the People, Projects and Patterns that have changed the way they program." He added: "Think of it as a moderated list where anyone can be moderator and everything

2666-420: The operation manuals of Symbolics computers; and Bill Atkinson 's WildCard application, on which he began work in 1985, and which was released in 1987 as HyperCard . Ward Cunningham has stated, that the wiki idea was influenced by his experience using HyperCard: he was shown the software by fellow programmer Kent Beck , before its official release (it was still called "WildCard" at the time), and, in his words,

2728-537: The right to put it back in (which some began to do). This event became referred to as the "WikiMindWipe." In April 2000, four WikiWikiWeb users independently tried to reduce the amount of text on the site via a large number of deletions. They mainly tried to delete material that was related to wikis and not software design patterns. They considered this material to be dead weight, and would have preferred to see it all replaced by concise guidance to newcomers. Contributors who disagreed with these deletions began copying all of

2790-523: The site and started posting comments about Extreme Programming on most of the pages related to software development. This annoyed a number people who wanted to talk about patterns, leading to the tag "XpFreeZone", which was put onto pages as a request not to talk about ExtremeProgramming on that page. Eventually most of the DesignPatterns people left to discuss patterns on their own wikis, and WikiWikiWeb began to be referred to as "WardsWiki" instead of

2852-674: The software on his company Cunningham & Cunningham 's website c2.com. When the site was functioning, Cunningham sent the following email to a colleague: Steve – I've put up a new database on my web server and I'd like you to take a look. It's a web of people, projects and patterns accessed through a cgi-bin script. It has a forms-based authoring capability that doesn't require familiarity with html. I'd be very pleased if you would get on and at least enter your name in RecentVisitors. I'm asking you because I think you might also add some interesting content. I'm going to advertise this

2914-476: The specific nature of the page's subject (a book, a person, a pattern), while topics denoted the theme of the page (Java, extreme programming, Smalltalk). However, people ignored this separation, and topics were collapsed into the categories. The "ChangeSummary" option began as an aid to telling which changes added interesting new content, and which were just minor adjustments of spelling, punctuation, or correction of web links. It started when some users began taking

2976-423: The system so that links could be created to cards that did not exist yet; creating such a link would in turn create a new blank card. In 1990 , Tim Berners-Lee of CERN built the first hypertext client, which he called World Wide Web (it was also a Web editor), and the first hypertext server (info.cern.ch). In 1991 he posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup , marking

3038-420: The use of pattern languages and (with Kent Beck ) the class-responsibility-collaboration cards . He also contributes to the extreme programming software development methodology . Much of this work was done collaboratively on the first wiki site. Cunningham is credited with the idea: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer." This refers to

3100-463: The wiki and many ideas in the field of software design patterns, made popular by the Gang of Four (GoF). He owns the company Cunningham & Cunningham Inc., a consultancy that has specialized in object-oriented programming . He coined the concept of technical debt and expanded on the idea in 1992. He created the site (and software) WikiWikiWeb , the first internet wiki, in 1995. In 2001, he signed

3162-524: The wiki concept was Vannevar Bush 's vision of the " memex ", a microfilm reader which would create automated links between documents. In a 1945 essay in Atlantic Monthly titled " As We May Think ", Bush described an imaginary future user interface: "Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions… The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined… Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items

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3224-507: Was "blown away" by it. Cunningham used HyperCard to make a stack holding three kinds of information: ideas, people who hold ideas, and projects where people share ideas. (He would later use this same architecture for the Patterns, People and Projects listed on the front page of his original wiki, the WikiWikiWeb.) Cunningham made a single card that would serve for all uses. It had three fields: Name, Description and Links. Cunningham configured

3286-568: Was JosWiki, developed by an international group of Java programmers who were trying to create a free and open "Java Operating System" (JOS). TWiki was created in Perl by Peter Thoeny in 1998, based on JosWiki. TWiki was aimed at large corporate intranets . It stored data in plain text files instead of in a database. PikiPiki was created by Martin Pool in 1999 as a rewrite of WikiWikiWeb in Python . It

3348-522: Was dedicated to "People, Projects and Patterns." Cunningham wrote the software to run it using the Perl programming language. He considered calling the software "quick-web", but instead named it using the Hawaiian word "wiki-wiki", which means "quick-quick" or "very quick", based on his memory of the Wiki Wiki Shuttle at Honolulu International Airport . Cunningham installed a prototype of

3410-526: Was developed from 1999 to 2000 by Clifford Adams. UseModWiki is a flat-file wiki written in Perl. It was based on Markus Denker's AtisWiki, which was in turn based on CvWiki. It introduced the square bracket syntax for linking words that was later adopted by many other wiki engines, such as MediaWiki. MoinMoin , created in Python by Jürgen Hermann and Thomas Waldmann in mid-2000, was initially based on PikiPiki. It

3472-463: Was distributed and accessible from any workstation on a network, changes became visible immediately to other users, enabling them to work concurrently on shared structures (documents, programs, ...). Three notable hypertext-based systems emerged in the 1980s, that may have been inspired by ZOG, KMS and/or one another: the NoteCards system, developed in 1984 and released by Xerox in 1985; Janet Walker's Symbolics Document Examiner , created in 1985 for

3534-439: Was founded in 1999 by Steven Black and evolved into a popular site with many pages. World66 was a Dutch company which tried to transform the open content idea into a profitable business. The website was founded in 1999 by Richard and Douwe Osinga , and contains travel-related articles covering destinations around the world. A wiki forum was created in 1999 for discussion of the newly created PhpWiki software. This became one of

3596-455: Was made to be a small program, using flat files and doing away with versioning (Pool felt that a wiki is not meant to be a document-management system). PhpWiki , created by Steve Wainstead in 1999, was the first wiki software written in PHP . The initial version was a feature-for-feature reimplementation of the WikiWikiWeb software. Subsequent versions adopted many features from UseModWiki. Swiki

3658-765: Was most likely created by IBM programmer Patrick Mueller, who wrote his in the REXX language, even before Wiki Base was released. Inspired by the example of the WikiWikiWeb, programmers soon started several other wikis to build knowledge bases about programming topics. Wikis became popular in the free and open-source software ( FOSS ) community, where they were used for collaboratively discussing and documenting software. However, being used only by specialists, these early software-focused wikis failed to attract widespread public attention. The WikiWikiWeb website approximately doubled in size every year 1995 to 2000, with disk usage rising from around 2 megabytes in 1995 to around 60 megabytes at

3720-564: Was part of the Smalltalk community. From December 2003 until October 2005, Cunningham worked for Microsoft in the "Patterns & Practices" group. From October 2005 to May 2007, he held the position of Director of Committer Community Development at the Eclipse Foundation . In May 2009, he joined AboutUs as its chief technology officer. On March 24, 2011 The Oregonian reported that Cunningham had departed AboutUs to join

3782-495: Was to let many users collaborate in creating and sharing information within large, shared hypertext, and from the very beginning, the system was designed as a true multi-user system. As a spatial hypermedia system, KMS was intended to represent all forms of explicit 'knowledge artifacts' such as presentations, documents, databases, and software programs, as well as common forms of electronic communication ( electronic mail , community bulletin boards , blogs ). The central element in

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3844-636: Was written in Squeak by Mark Guzdial and Jochen Rick in 1999. Zwiki, written in Python in 1999, was based on the Zope web application server (it could also co-exist with the Plone content management system). It was initially developed by Simon Michael and Joyful Systems . Traction TeamPage was released in December 1999; it was the first proprietary wiki application aimed at enterprise customers. UseModWiki

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