I originally started developing this as a means to help organise my PhD research by cataloguing bibliographic notations, references, quotes and thoughts on a computer via a program that was not tied to a single operating system (like similar and expensively commercial software) and that could be accessed from anywhere on the web (unlike other systems). Additionally, I wanted a quick way to search, for example, for all quotes and thoughts referencing a keyword or to be able to automatically reformat bibliographies to different style guides.
As this is a system designed to run on any web server, I thought its use could be expanded to groups of researchers who could all contribute to and read the WIKINDX. This concept is very similar to a Wiki Encyclopaedia where anyone can add or edit entries in an on-line encyclopaedia.
Since the original ideas, various others have been implemented such as a wide variety of import and export options and, importantly, the incorporation of a WYSIWYG word processor that can insert citations and (re)format them with a few clicks of the mouse. This was powerful enough for me to write my entire PhD thesis in. (v4 removed this feature to a plug-in rather than being a core feature.)
The first release of WIKINDX was way back in 2003 and it has been in continual development since then.
Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard