‘Twitter Wiki’ by David Perdew

David Perdew’s latest article is titled “Twitter Wiki”. [‘Twitter Wiki’ Article]

David Perdew’s latest article:

A wiki is a collection of Web pages that enable authorized members of the community to make changes or add contributions to the content of the website. These wikis use simple markup languages, or languages used in formatting Web pages. The word comes from the Hawaiian word wiki, which means âquickâ or âfastâ. Some say âwikiâ stands for âWhat I Know Isâ, but this is a backronym, a phrase made after the fact to make a word an acronym.

Wikis are made to provide information to members of a niche or community, and the most popular cultural items are bound to have wikis. There are wikis devoted to cult classics like Star Trek, and even frivolous things like lolspeak. Twitter is incredibly popular, but there is no official Twitter wiki for ordinary users who just want to know more about Twitter, or to share knowledge on Twitter-related items like acronyms and terms used on Twitter.

While there is no official Twitter wiki for general users, there are others. The official Twitter wiki for the Twitter Application Programming Interface or API, for example, was made to cater to programmers who want to make Twitter apps, or computer applications that interface with the Twitter website. Twitter.com has made the API, a set of tools and interfaces to work with Twitter, available to programmers. As a result there are programs that can send tweets automatically, or filter and sort followers for further operations, and many other such applications. The Twitter API wiki may appeal to those with intentions of creating programs that work with Twitter, but general users will not find it useful at all.

General users who want to know more about Twitter can enter the keywords âTwitter wikiâ into any Internet search engine, and they would be given links to wikis made by fans. The Twitter Fan Wiki in particular seems to be well-developed and expanding. A lot of information on it was contributed by Twitter users, and much of this information is about Twitter, about events within the Twitter community, and some things that have only the least connection to Twitter.

One section on the Twitter Fan Wiki, the Newbies Corner, is made expressly to help newcomers to Twitter get up to speed and to get current with their lingo. The limitation of 140 characters for tweets has led to the use of many colloquial expressions and new words, some of which were inherited from the popular Internet speak and some invented by Twitter users themselves. The sections are descriptive and informative: Descriptions explains what Twitter is, Etiquette puts forth some rules of conduct to follow on Twitter, and Glossary is the section for getting your vernacular on track for Twitter. The section #Hashtags discusses a feature on Twitter that allows users to tag their tweets with topic flags, to make searching easier. This particular Twitter wiki even includes an unofficial documentation section for the Twitter API, filed under âGeeky Stuffâ along with other stuff that geeks would like.

A wiki is a community effort and also a reward to the community in general. Perhaps an official Twitter wiki will be made in the future, but for the moment, fan wikis will have to do.

*This news post was submitted by David Perdew.