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What is a Wiki and why are they so great?
By Jamie | July 19, 2007
Finally, last week I was managed to score off ”Implement a company Wiki for internal documentation” off my to-do list! Within a day of using it, I’m now wondering why we didn’t start this business wiki last year!
Wiki Wookie
So what is a Wiki, and why are they so great? It could be a name for a character out of Star War, but actually its a really simple and effective way to organised information between a groups of people. Lee LeFever gives an excellent guide to what are wiki’s and how they work, fantastic video!
Wiki Resources
I must give a shout to Andy of Recent Changes, a fellow Edinburgh Coffee morning for a bunch of these resources.
- Another video to backup concepts explain in the above video from ZDNet, a bit more businesslike
- Still wondering how a Wiki could be used in your business, see Atlassian News for 8 Ways to use a wiki
- Wiki Etiquette, the dos and don’ts
- The worlds biggest Wiki, Wikipedia runs on Wikimedia
- Remember most Wiki’s are open source, but which one of the hundred should you go with? Here’s a comprehensive list of features from WikiMatrix
- Add-on for Firefox that allows quicker editing of Wiki’s
- An offline Wiki Editor, for when your not connected
Topics: Business, Business Applications, Web development & eCommerce |
July 24th, 2007 at 11:04 am
I think the big problem with Wiki’s is not necessarily in the technology but in the marketing of them - most users I have asked have little or no idea what it is, what is does, or how it could be applied. You say the words “Word Processor” or “Email” and they give a little clue but say “Wiki” and you get “Say What?”. It kind of reminds me of the days when I used to say “Spreadsheet” and the users would say “Spread what?” - nowadays of course I wish I’d never explained the term as we now have thousands of spreadsheets all over the place.
Anyway, I’ve just got the powers that be to approve Sharepoint Server 2007 in our organisation and I understand that has a Wiki feature built-in so I’m looking forward to seeing how we can best implement the feature in our company.
Jason.
theitmanagersjournal.blogspot.com
July 24th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Your exactly right. Talking to my flatmate who use Wiki’s at his compnay. He say’s their great, but some kind of structure needs to be formulated, else they become a mess.