Second Generation Wiki

Last modified by Eleni Cojocariu on 2026/03/19 17:23

Explanation

First generation wikis

InformationFocused on content creation. Some example of features:
  • Page editing

    Use simple wiki syntax to format text, create tables, create links, display images, etc. Alternatively use a powerful WYSIWYG editor to edit the content of pages.

  • Version Control

    Any change made in XWiki is saved under version control, meaning you can view any previous version of a page, compare different versions or rollback to any past version.

  • Rights

    Control who can view, edit or delete pages in a flexible manner. Apply rights to a page, its children or an entire wiki.

  • Search

    Allows searching on the full wiki using wildcards, faceting search results, getting search result RSS feeds and more.

  • Exports

    Export wiki pages to PDF, ODT, RTF, XML or HTML.

Second generation wikis

InformationFocused on structure and application creation (by editing wiki pages). Some examples of what can be created:
  • Blog

    Host one or multiple blogs to communicate information or organize it using categories and tags.

  • File Manager

    Manage your folders and files, having viewers for many supported file types (such as office and PDF), displaying a tag cloud and allowing filtering.

  • Meetings

    Organize meetings (create, view and modify meetings to come) and send invitations.

  • Forums

    Discuss important topics using multiple forums that support answers, comments and votes.

  • Tasks

    Create and assign tasks for designated projects, with associated assignees and due dates.

Today most of user's needs are not satisfied because it takes too long and it's too costly to develop small applications. On the other hand, a second generation wiki like XWiki is a perfect platform for this. XWiki is the toolkit for the web!

Did you know?

Chris Anderson introduced the concept of Long Tail.

xwiki-long-tail.png Applying it to XWiki gives the above diagram.

What it means is that there are thousands of applications required by users that are not built today because of prohibitive complexity and costs (the yellow area is larger than the red area on the diagram).

Building them traditionally would take too long, reducing their value over time. XWiki provides a cost-effective solution, enabling non-developers to create these applications quickly and organically, maximizing their impact.

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