Ward+Cunningham

Ward Cunningham is credited with the invention of the wiki, beginning for the Portland Pattern Repository in 1995 (see some of the [|history] from their perspective with the [|origins being rooted to the 1970s]). You can learn a little more about him [|here]. His original description of a wiki was "the simplest online database that could possibly work. Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly. Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself. Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users." [[|original source]]

Ward is clearly a technical person and his various resources can read like an engineering manual but there are some gems among them. A little more personable intro to him can be found [|here]. The consulting company run by him and his wife (Cunningham & Cunningham) is not taking on new clients as both of them have become busy with new interests.

Wikis are collaborative work spaces and as such need a certain degree of etiquette and politeness in their interaction. Ward Cunningham discusses this a little bit [|here]. Elsewhere, he specifies that [|WikiSquatting] (using Wiki as personal Web space), [|WalledGardens] (a series of self-contained pages within a larger wiki), [|ChatMode] ([|ThreadMode] without cleanup), and especially [|WikiSpam] (commercial advertising) are all frowned upon. It is important to set up your own conventions with those that you will be collaborating with so that this does not result in unneccessary conflict.