Ward Cunningham, der Erfinder der Wikis hat versucht mit den Wiki Design Prinzipien eine auf das Wesentlich reduzierte Auflistung von Rahmenbedingungen zu skizieren, die ein Wiki erfolgreich machen.

#  Open - Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.
# Incremental - Pages can cite other pages, including pages that have not been written yet.
# Organic - The structure and text content of the site are open to editing and evolution.
# Mundane - A small number of (irregular) text conventions will provide access to the most useful page markup.
# Universal - The mechanisms of editing and organizing are the same as those of writing so that any writer is automatically an editor and organizer.
# Overt - The formatted (and printed) output will suggest the input required to reproduce it.
# Unified - Page names will be drawn from a flat space so that no additional context is required to interpret them.
# Precise - Pages will be titled with sufficient precision to avoid most name clashes, typically by forming noun phrases.
# Tolerant - Interpretable (even if undesirable) behavior is preferred to error messages.
# Observable - Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor to the site.
# Convergent - Duplication can be discouraged or removed by finding and citing similar or related content.

siehe [[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples]]

[[Todo]] Translate Me

Im Laufe der Zeit haben sich daraus "Muster" oder "Best Practices" im Umgang mit Wikis entwickelt, die wir unter [[Wiki Philosophie]] beschreiben. Ob die von Cunningham beschriebenen Designprinzipien für dein Wiki Relevant sind, entscheidet auch, ob du einen bestimmten [[Wiki Reifegrad]] anstrebst.