[thelist] wiki

[David Siedband]

Wikis are a great way to allow people to collaboratively edit text 
documents without a lot of overhead.

The problem with wikis is when people try to use them as a simple CMS, 
because they expect the user to learn a new behavior.

In general, I favor using a content management system like Plone and a 
browser based wysiwyg editor like Epoz
http://mjablonski.zope.de/Epoz

The filesystem-like view of Plone and the famiarity of the GUI elements 
in Epoz present a familiar enough interface that most users seem to be 
able to jump in and start working with them.

The only place I use wikis is in development projects, where people 
are, for the most part already familiar with wikis or generally not 
uncomfortable with learning a simple new markup syntax.  I have one 
client who requested a wiki on their intranet, but in general I don't 
bring them up as a solution.

--
David






On Aug 17, 2004, at 8:30 AM, Michal Migurski wrote:

>> I was researching wikis. I don't know a whole lot about them, and my
>> first impression is that they are confusing, especially with the 
>> smashed
>> together capitalized words and barely structured pages.  
>> Nevertheless, a
>> wiki could possibly be useful.
>
> Yes - as a few people have mentioned in this thread, the main barrier 
> with
> wikis seems to be the expectations on the users' end. We try to use 
> them
> for almost all client communications; every project gets one. Some 
> clients
> grok them immediately, and they are wildly successful. Other clients 
> don't
> get that they can be edited, or aren't comfortable with changing 
> things on
> a website, or just generally prefer email/phone communication.
>>