Wiki wiki what?

Hmmm... Interesting subject. I find Wiki's confusing in some ways and not in others. I use Wikipedia quite a lot when researching things that I don't need a great deal of accuracy on and am quite familiar with that use.

It's when Wiki's are used for things such as the CIA's Intellipedia, i.e. "consists of three wikis running on JWICS, SIPRNet and InterlinkU"... ??? Can't the CIA manage to get a wiki running off their own servers? I think the main thing that confuses me is: where do most wikis live? Did Ward Cunningham release an open source code that people are using to create wikis on their own servers or are most somehow linked to Wikipedia or something similar? Is it a trait of wikis that they are free of charge to create? Anyway, I'm not quite clear on it but I do understand the uses of wikis for some applications.

Of the links I followed I thought a couple such as the SJCPL Subject Guides and the Book Lovers Wiki were very easy to read and straight forward to follow. One of the problems I've noticed is that since anyone can start a wiki - a lot of these people don't seem to know what looks good or is easy to read at a glance, resulting in clunky looking pages that are not user friendly.

I've created a Wikipedia account and have edited the details to inform anyone interested that Pitt Town Bottoms has a model aircraft flying field! And yes, I did actually live in Pitt Town for a few years before leaving home. :)

I'll be adding my addition to the SL Learning 2.0 Wiki as soon as I get approval.