Wikis
This is a list of wikis with a quick description on their style and topics. I will mainly be listing wikis that are notable and/or different.
- Wikipedia, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It has strict standards for what can be added to the encyclopedia both in scope, style, and accuracy. Citations are mandatory.
- WikiWikiWeb, WikiWikiWeb is the original wiki, it focuses on programmers, programming projects, and design patterns. It is associated with the extreme programming movement. Stylistically, it is very different than Wikipedia. Generally the articles start with an explanation on a topic then the article devolves into “thread mode”, which is a conversation thread of people giving their opinions on the idea. People are allowed to argue. Unlike a comment section, those conversations are editable. Often times the arguments are replaced by summaries of the arguments. Citations are optional and most things are uncited. The nice part about this wiki is that it lets you consider the pros and cons of ideas, and it contains people's opinions. It's like a mixture between a wiki and a forum.
Namu wiki, This is the biggest korean language wiki (bigger than the Korean wikipedia). It covers a broader set of topics than Wikipedia such as: internet subcultures, anime characters, and vtubers. Wikipedia can cover these things but Namu has way more articles on those topics. This is because they have a much lower relevance threshold for what's allowed on. On namu, you do not have to cite your sources, leading many people to write about topics from what they remember rather than what has been published on the topic. This means that people will chronicle Internet community history that lacks mainstream interest. They are more likely to mention memes, in-jokes, and obscure facts about a community in their article. The wiki has a much more personal tone than Wikipeda's. There is lots of misinformation on the wiki due to their poor editorial standards. Take everything with a grain of salt. The main value of the wiki lies in its different scope, if you want to learn about Internet subcultures (especially east Asian Internet subcultures), the wiki can be a good source of information.
You can read articles in english by going to en.namu.wiki instead of namu.wiki. The English articles are machine translated from Korean so it is a bit clunky to read.
By Logan Andersen. I dedicate this article to the public domain, under the CC0 public domain waiver.
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