We had a really interesting chat at the office about whether XWiki as a company originated the "Second Generation Wiki" term. Looking back into Google and previous versions of XWiki websites, the earlier mention of a Second Generation Wiki we found was here: http://old.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/XTech2005Presentation , dating from May 2005.

When we started googling the term we found that of around 7,500 pages mentioning the term ( http://www.google.com/search?q=%22second+generation+wiki%22 ) , only 219 did not mention XWiki ( http://www.google.com/search?q=%22second+generation+wiki%22-XWiki ). This shows a real strong correlation between XWiki and the Second Generation Wiki term.

Google itself isn't faultless since it returns some pages even when XWiki is explicitely excluded from the search query (this one for instance : http://weblog.infoworld.com/tcdaily/archives/2007/01/groovy_language.html ). Some of the other websites returned sound a lot like they are using XWiki without mentioning its name (check this page for instance : http://www.xcellor.com/services/wikis.html ).

However it is interesting to note that the term "Application Wiki" can and has been used by us as a synonym of Second Generation Wiki. Upon creating XWiki Ludovic drew part of its inspiration from TWiki that offered (and still do) some - limited - application creation possibilities. The fact that they were limited was in fact the main reason why the work on XWiki was started, back in January 2004.

At around the same time in 2004 was created JotSpot, that marketed itself as the first Application Wiki. JotSpot offers bundled applications when you download it as well as a directory of applications you can add to your wiki. Though obvisously applications for JotSpot can be created, I do not know what kind of mechanism they are created through and whether it is similar to XWiki's own system of class, objects & templates.

JotSpot is not an Open-Source solution and it was bought by Google back in 2006. It is supposedly scheduled to come out as the new Google Sites at wome point in the future, but it is not clear whether options others than ASP will be offered, nor how application creation will be handled.

The current disparition of JotSpot leaves XWiki as the only wiki built around the core notion of application creation combined with scripting abilities. However a lot more results are returned by Google for this term, and XWiki is part of around 10% of them (5,000 mentions of JotSpot for 1,700 mentions of XWiki out of 14,700 pages mentioning the term). It is likely that the term is used in more situations & contexts than the more specific "Second Generation wiki".

Now there could be a debate on whether "Application Wiki" & "Second Generation Wiki" do mean the same thing. My position would be that being a Second Generation wiki encompasses the fact of being an Application Wiki, at least in the case of XWiki.

XWiki was built to answer a general use case : letting people make effective use of a wiki within their company. This could be broken down in a number of subsets, including (but not limited to): advanced user rights, application creation possibilities, scripting abilities, wide database support, rich text editor... XWiki meets some of these requirements very well (think about application creation) while it has room for improvements in others (think about the WYSIWYG editor).

In some ways second generation wiki then means "built for industrial use" as opposed to "built to explore the possibilities of the wiki concept" (which would be what first generation wikis do) - though one would be right to reply that MediaWiki, TWiki, DekiWiki or Confluence are built for industrial use too. Here industrial use is not understood the same way, that is, those wikis are not natively built to be integrated with other applications through database connexions with data feeds handled through scripts and application creation possibilities...

On 27/12/2007, Your XEN ICT Team - Ricardo Rodriguez < webmaster@xen.net> wrote:

Hi all,

I've been harvesting information about XWiki, its origins, development
and goals. It is clear that is by no means easy to draw a simple picture
of the whole XWiki ecosystem but as far as I see, there there is a key
concept extremely powerful when trying to explain what XWiki can do:
XWiki is a second generation wiki.

Please, is this "second generation wiki" concept original from the XWiki
Development Team, or XWiki Company, or has it any other known origin and
development?

Thanks!

--
Ricardo Rodríguez
Your XEN ICT Team

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