There are essentially three types of usage for wiki software: public-facing wikis with a potentially large community of readers and editors, private
enterprise wikis for
data management by corporations and other organizations, and
personal wikis, meant to be used by a single person to manage notes, and usually run on a
desktop. Some types of wiki software are specifically designed for one of the usage types, while other types can be used for all three, but contain functionality, either in their core or through plugins, that help with one or more of the usage types.
Public wikis Public wikis are usually open to the public to read, edit and comment on some or all of the article space of each wiki. Many offer registration to offer further access and controls to each user and a few have, in-part commercialised aspects or further access, such as the popular wiki farm,
Fandom.
MediaWiki is by far the most dominant software as it powers
Wikipedia, consistently and by a large margin, the most visited public wiki, it also powers many other public wikis as well. Other wiki engines used regularly for public wikis include
MoinMoin and
PmWiki,
along with many others. especially to enhance internal
knowledge sharing. It tends to have a greater emphasis on features like access control, integration with other software, and
document management. Most proprietary wiki applications specifically market themselves as enterprise solutions, including
Socialtext,
Jive,
Traction TeamPage and
Notion. Increasingly offerings appear which use the name 'wiki' but do not offer basic elements common to established wikis, like Wiki Markup and Link-first workflow as in
Confluence (since 2018),
Full Text Search as in
Microsoft Teams, or Version Control. In addition, some open source wiki applications also describe themselves as enterprise solutions, including
XWiki,
Foswiki,
TWiki, and
BlueSpice. Some open-source wiki applications, though they do not specifically bill themselves as enterprise solutions, have marketing materials geared for enterprise users, like
Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware and
MediaWiki. Many other wiki applications have also been used within enterprises. Among the many companies and government organizations that use wikis internally are
Adobe Systems,
Amazon.com,
Intel,
Microsoft, and the
United States intelligence community. Within organizations, wikis may either add to or replace centrally managed content management systems. Their decentralized nature allows them, in principle, to disseminate needed information across an organization more rapidly and more cheaply than a centrally controlled knowledge repository. Wikis can also be used for
document management,
project management,
customer relationship management,
enterprise resource planning, and many other kinds of data management. Features of wikis which can serve an enterprise include: • Entering information into quick and easy-to-create pages, including hyperlinks to other corporate information systems like people directories,
CMS, applications, and thus to facilitate the buildup of useful knowledge bases. • Reduces
e-mail overload. Wikis allow all relevant information to be shared by people working on a given project. Conversely, only the wiki users interested in a given project need look at its associated wiki pages, in contrast to high-traffic mailing lists which may burden subscribers with many messages, regardless of their relevance. It is also very useful for the project manager to have all the communication stored in one place, which allows them to link the responsibility for every action taken to a particular team member. • Organizes information. Wikis help users structure information into discoverable and searchable categories. These may arise from users in a bottom-up way. Users can create lists, tables, timelines and other ways of expressing order. • Builds consensus. Wikis allow structuring the expression of views, on a topic being considered by authors, on the same page. This feature is very useful when writing documentation, preparing presentations, when author opinions differ, and so on. • Access levels by rights and roles. Users can be denied access to view and/or edit given pages, depending upon their department or role within the organization. • Knowledge management with comprehensive searches. This includes document management, project management, and knowledge repositories useful during times of employee turnover or retirement.
Personal wikis Software that is specifically designed for running personal wikis includes
PmWiki,
Tomboy, and
ConnectedText (now discontinued). Other, more general, wiki applications have components geared for individual users, including
MoinMoin (which offers a "DesktopEdition"), and
TiddlyWiki. == Editing ==