Why do I want a Wiki?
I would like a central repository for notes. These notes become the framework for design documents, and documentation. As a developer and a system administrator, I work on multiple machines with multiple platforms. The most common denominator is the network. The next is that there is a web browser. Also, my notes are generally text based, since a text editor is available on all platforms, and generally, a text editor does not screw with the source code within a document. It not try to correct the capitalization, or expand abbreviations.
Basically, when I am working on an issue at a machine that is not my desktop, I don't have to wait til I back to my machine with the proper version of word to document the solution.
Most wiki's work on a common format that can be close text document.
=== A Heading ===
* List 1
** List A
* List 2
| Column 1 row 1| Column 2 row 1|
| Column 1 row 2 | Column 2 row 2 |
In addition, many wiki's allow for source code formating, which means that code (c#, XML) will be "pretty printed".
So this is why would like to have a wiki as the knowledge repository.
- Central Repository
- Unstructured Notes
- Almost Plain Text
- Source Code Formatting
- Force a simple document formating, you only have headings, list, bold, italics.
- forces you to break up information into manageable pieces.
- Does not do Microsoft Word
- spell check is not integrated (unless you use Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari)
- yet another markup language to learn
- Can be a mess. Main users need to keep information organized.
Wiki are generally open to encourage collaboration.
They do not need to be open, but they should always be collaborative.
Other reasons for a wiki:
- collaboration. I don't need to ask someone for the lastest version of a document in order to to minor revisions.
- A good wiki will allow a user to get an alert when a page is edited
- A good wiki has a good search engine
- a good wiki keeps a list of revisions
- my preferred wiki, allows for different workspace, which can be public of private.