WikiWikiWiki
I’ve never really had much of a look at Wiki’s till recently. Wasn’t too sure what they were, and wasn’t interested enough to find out more.
Till I started finding interesting stuff on the WikiPedia that is.
It’s a pretty funky idea. Take one CMS solution, allow pretty much anyone to be able to register and then edit any page, keeping at least a certain history of those changes, and allowing others to comment on it, is pretty interesting.
The WikiPedia is a perfect use for it, loads of good info on there, provided by various people who have some interest and knowledge to share.
I’ve been unsure about other uses for Wiki’s really. I see mention of being able to use them as a blogging tool, or a forum. And though, yes, they probably could be used that way, you’d be a lot better off using a tool designed for the job. A Wiki would be missing some of the useful stuff that specifically designed stuff has.
One place I’m seeing it could be pretty useful though, is collaborative documentation.
For example, I’ve just set a WikkaWiki up on a server at work. the first thing that’s gone on there is the Staff Handbook. It was a Powerpoint presentation, which was a bit pants to be honest. Especially when not everyone has Powerpoint on their machines!
It also needs occasional updates from different managers, for different things. Maybe the Pay Scales are adjusted and the Accounts Managers needs to update it. Maybe there are some new Health & Safety points that the responsible person needs to update. Various things.
Now, hopefully, I have it in place, certain people can be given access to edit pages, and can go in and do it themselves, rather than have to moan about Powerpoint or get me to do it.
Updating documentation between disperate groups as well. I’ve been thinking about how we might use another WikkaWiki to work on documentation at Cre8asite. Most of us live pretty far apart, different time zones etc… Forum threads have proven to be less than brilliant for that kind of collaberative tracking of work as well. Threads get shifted down over time, comments get lost in threads, it all gets messy.
The ability to have a page of documentation, all be able to work on it, and montior the changes, while also being able to comment below it, is interesting and sounds like something that would work a lot better than some forums threads. If something else needs to be discussed, someone links off to another page, and starts creating it there. Easy stuff.
One thing though, there are a whole load of Wiki Engines, and see little to work out which are good, and which are not so good.
I’ve found WikkaWiki to be pretty good in my initial toying. The ouput code looks pretty good, fairly easy to use. Some things I’d like to see improvements on though.
Such as some better WYSIWYG editing tools. WikiEdit is very basic, and doesn’t work in Opera. It’s not good enough for some people I’d like to get using a Wiki, because they aren’t going to understand the strange formatting rules, and the WYSIWYG editor isn’t easy enough to use.
Some better contorl over the layout of the page. Editing the CSS file for WikkaWiki has proven successful so far. I’d like to be able to do more with the markup though, some things that would be nice to move around a bit or recode in some situations. From the look of WikkaWiki, that’s very difficult if it’s even possible. Something like WordPress’ Themes would be nice.
Maybe there are some Wiki Engines out there that do what I want already, or have decent plugins to get the functionality, I don’t know. Could do with an easier way to compare them really. I went off MediaWiki very quickly for what I assume was an .htaccess problem. Whenever I tried to make a new page and click to edit it, I got taken to my sites 404 page instead. At least WikkaWiki has the sense to have it’s own .htaccess file stop that behaviour built into it.