OT: Wikis

[Alex Tweedly]

Sivakatirswami wrote:

>
> We see frequent mention of wikis here... if you haven't tried it or  
> just getting started with wiki's PMWiki is absolutely fabulous in  
> terms of flexibility, easy of admin and online support. 100% PHP but  
> you don't have to know a drop of PHP to get it up and running.
>
<start grumpy old man response>

I don't doubt that PMWiki is an excellent tool for creating a Wiki.

What I doubt is whether a Wiki is an excellent tool for documenting 
anything. I've seen some good wikis - but I've seen far, far more of 
them that I thought were poor.

For most topics or areas to document or describe, the most important 
thing to get right is the organization of the data. I've seen a number 
of wikis that contained huge quantities of information - but I could 
never find what I wanted without a lot of effort.  Wikis make it easy to 
add new categories - so it's easy to have too many categories, or 
individual articles mis-categorized.

If the categorization is obvious (e.g. alphabetical, or a hierarchical 
class library API, or ....) then a wiki should work well. Otherwise, it 
needs a good "owner" to keep it in shape, move new items if needed, and 
provide the structure and consistency that makes it be a useful 
repository for information rather than a "write-only" heap.

(Think of our many discussions on Rev's documentation - having the info 
in there is not helpful if you can't find it easily when you want it).

<end of Sunday morning grump - time for a coffee :-) >

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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