Wikis have sometimes been defined as the 'easiest possible database application', where 'records' (pages) can be created by anyone, edited by anyone, deleted by anyone (and then, if desired, restored by anyone). The word itself was borrowed (stolen?) from the Hawaiian phrase 'wiki-wiki' which means 'quickly' or 'super-fast'.

Ward Cunningham is usually credited as the inventor of the first wiki deserving of the name circa 1995. The link in this paragraph includes his organization of wiki history (including interesting tidbits on when-and-how now common wiki features were first defined).

Arguably, the Portland Pattern Repository was the first wiki (without arguments, how can history be written)?

Today, one of the best known examples of a wiki is Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is a collaboratively authored general-purpose encylopedia. It has demonstrated that some forms of knowledge management can scale into active use by hundreds of thousands of authors.

The SwitchWiki homepage keeps a fairly current list of over one thousand active wiki communities.

Most recently, the term 'social software' has come into vogue as a way to describe the mission and future of wiki philosophy and technology. This acknowledges that today's Internet (especially the growth of Web services which can share data between applications) offers a wide variety of means to develop community alongside wikis as defined more narrowly. This includes social networks like Friendster as well as photo-sharing services like Flickr - and many more.

Precisely because no one controls the future of wikis, we cannot be sure what they will 'look like' a decade from now. It seems clear that they will become integrated increasingly with other forms of social software. So long as the core concept of a wiki is defended - pages can be written, edited, deleted and recovered in community - their history seems bright.

JotSpot is based on a wiki design architecture as well as the wiki philosophy of allowing everyone to write-edit-read and collaborate together in community.

Like many wikis, JotSpot offers features that were either not envisioned at the beginning or were not wanted. For instance, some wiki purists argue that page permissions (only some, not all, can read and/or write to a specific page) violate the essential spirit of a wiki. As wiki spam and vandalism have become more common, many wikis have added measures to enhance security and reduce the need for pruning and recovery of pages. So long as the control decisions are retained by the community, the spirit of wiki-ness continues to flourish.

Fortunately, even many who were instrumental in founding the wiki movement recognize that vendors and users should be encouraged to adapt wiki-ness to serve a wide variety of needs. One size does not fit all. Jotspot's own history and vision fits nicely into a cluster of wiki environments which have sought to integrate applications into the collaborative writing process.