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WIKI, pronounced both WICK-ee and wee-kee, is a website where visitors may freely and collaboratively add or edit content.  It means “Quick" in Hawaiian.

Most Wiki’s have the familiar html interface and have a simple text syntax for creating and editing pages.  Due to the open nature philosophy of Wiki, it encourages a person to share or refute knowledge on the topic by allowing contributions to be added or edited by anyone who has access to the Wiki site.

And since just about anyone who has access to the content can make changes, vandalism is a constant problem for Wikis.   To safeguard against unwanted edits on the pages, most Wiki installations have the ability to record and to roll back the changes made.  It can be monitored to ensure that the information on the page is of good quality.  A person who maintains the pages can be informed of modifications to the page allowing him/her to verify the validity of changes immediately.

It is easier to correct mistakes than to restrict users from making contributions.  This has been found to work surprisingly well since contributors tend to be more numerous and persistent than vandals.

One good example of what a Wiki looks like is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://www.wikipedia.org).   Wikipedia is an online project that is attempting to create the world's most comprehensive and free encyclopedia using Wiki methods.

According to Wikipedia's own entry, there were more than 200 language editions of Wikipedia, fifteen of which had more than 50,000 articles each.

Wikipedia's official slogan is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit".  The software developed for the project allows anyone to add new areas of information as they come in to being.  For example, during the Tour de France, the encyclopedia entry was being edited as the race developed.  But since the encyclopedia entries are all linked together, from there you can reach the history of the race, the rules of the race and the information for each individual race that has been run since the first one in 1903.  Each race has its own entry, something that would be incredible in a physical encyclopedia.

As well, if you are knowledgeable in an area of the encyclopedia that is lightly touched on or has inaccurate information, you don't need to contact anyone.  Just correct or expand the entry yourself.  Others will see what you have added, and if they find things that need correction or expansion, they will do so as well.

In this way, the project has exploded into 4.6 million articles, with 1.2 million of them in English.  As information grows, so does the usefulness of the site. It is now one of the 20 most visited places on the Internet.

So if you need information on a subject and the search engines are not bringing it to you, try Wikipedia and see what they have available.   Even if you are just looking for something interesting to read, you can go to the "Featured article" or "Random Article" selections for reading suggestions.