March 1995
Ward Cunningham creates the wiki
Ward Cunningham launched the first wikiA website anyone can edit — quick collaborative publishing; Wikipedia is the most famous example. in March 1995 — quick collaborative editing that inspired WikipediaA free, collaboratively edited encyclopedia on the web — one of the largest reference works ever built. and countless internal dev docs.
What it was for
WikiA website anyone can edit — quick collaborative publishing; Wikipedia is the most famous example. syntax and culture ('edit this page') shaped how engineering teams document runbooks, RFCs, and postmortems. Cunningham's pattern language work also influenced agileAn iterative software development style — short cycles, continuous feedback, and adaptive planning. and software design thinking.
People
- Ward Cunningham — creator
Why it's here
The wikiA website anyone can edit — quick collaborative publishing; Wikipedia is the most famous example. invented lightweight collaborative documentation.
Why it mattered
It lowered the barrier to contributing knowledge compared to formal CMSContent management system — software for building and publishing websites without hand-writing every page. tools.
What it solved
Team knowledge was trapped in email and individual files without shared editing.
Media
ImageWikiCarrigg Photography for the Wikimedia Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Related
- Wikipedia launchedJanuary 15, 2001