Two main writing modes are discernible in a multiuser wiki.

• Document Mode, in which someone writes a contribution in the third person and leaves it unsigned. Others then view that piece of text as community property, and various authors can later update this to reflect changing community consensus.
• Thread Mode, a form of discussion in which members of the wiki comments in the first person and sign them. Others rarely edit signed create spin-off discussions. Different authors exchange personal views and opinion much as they would in e-mail on a mailing list. Content can be actual e-mail discussion posted as a thread archive and commented.

Two main writing modes are discernible in a multiuser wiki.

• Document Mode, in which someone writes a contribution in the third person and leaves it unsigned. Others then view that piece of text as community property, and various authors can later update this to reflect changing community consensus.
• Thread Mode, a form of discussion in which members of the wiki comments in the first person and sign them. Others rarely edit signed create spin-off discussions. Different authors exchange personal views and opinion much as they would in e-mail on a mailing list. Content can be actual e-mail discussion posted as a thread archive and commented.

You're browsing a database with a program called WikiWikiWeb. And the program has an attitude. The program wants everyone to be an author. So, the program slants in favor of authors at some inconvenience to readers.

At the functional level, which is what the user sees, the essence of Wiki can be summarized by these statements:

• A wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki Web site, using only a plain-vanilla Web browser without any extra add-ons.
• Wiki promotes meaningful topic associa tions between ditferent pages by making page link creation almost intuitively easy and by showing whether an inrended rarger page exisrs or nor.
• A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape.

From a technical point of view, Wiki rests on the World Wide Web and the ubiquitous server-client applications for this global infrastructure. The underlying HTTP protocol defines how client-server communications occur. A wiki understands the GET (request data) and POST (request to submit data) transactions in this protocol.

A wiki is a freely expandable collection of interlinked Web "pages", a hypertext system for storing and modifying information - a database, where each page is easily editable by any user with a forms-capable Web browser client.