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One very nice implementation of the wiki concept is TWiki. My school's CS department has its own TWiki set up, divided into subwebs for many different courses. The courses on our wiki are almost all Computer Science courses, but there are a few First Year Seminar webs (located here, here, and here) that might give you some ideas as to how to use a wiki in a non-technical class.

Wasn't Wiki that annoying robot on the old Buck Rogers TV show? bee dee bee dee bee dee. Sorry, I'm old.

Well, let's get started then! Anyone know of a TWiki site that'll host it? I'm not exactly ready to set up my own TWiki server in my apartment.

A complete coding standard is difficult to come up with in one shot. Also, developers generally have their "de-facto" standards that they like to follow, so getting buy-in can be difficult. Perhaps it's easier to just allow the coding standard to evolve as needed by using a collaboration facility to come up with it.

Take a look at Twiki.

TWiki has built-in version-control, so you can recover useful info after the site's been defaced ( if you choose wiki )

Questions, though...

Accessibility: how much?

web-forum is totally accessable, wiki less so.

Do you want whomever can contribute to do so?

I'd use a forum, then, but instead of expecting the forum to produce finished docs, I'd use a moderatable forum to produce raw info ( tips & tricks, experiences, point-up blindnesses in the program's --help listings, etc. ) that could be turned, easily, into user-friendly and complete docs.

Others would prefer a more exclusive wiki, to produce more self-consistent docs...

Do you want the docs to stand on their own?

TWiki's got a plugin that creates non-editable web-page versions of the wiki, so you could deploy it behind a .. password block, and give accounts only to whom-you-trust, and have it automatically create web-pages from the wiki your friends create...

Personally, I'd just go with a forum, and every 6 weeks create a new version of each doc ( and have the comments on that version help me create the next version ).

It'd be as inclusive as possible, it'd force me to perceive where I was creating problems for users' comprehension ( my work's assumptions ), I could put source-code up that way for the parts that were annoying me ( to get as many eyes on it as possible ), it'd be ( from the users perspective ) simpler.

I'd zope ( they're down, right now, some sort of proxy eror? ) it just because then their bookmarks would work...

We've been using Twiki for 2 years now. Its fantastic and will suit you perfectly. Takes some getting used to but is 100x better than message boards or other forms of community software.

(First off, I'm a big TightVNC user and I need to thank you for such an awesome program.)

I think Wiki's are a good way for gathering information - but it is not a total replacement for documentation. Another cool project that uses a free form wiki extremely well is POE (no direct link to protect it), but good consise documentation is still an elusive goal. I've experimented with twiki, which I like alot, but in my workplace I need more controlable structure so I'm going the more formal CMS route instead. In particular I like webgui, which seems to be a nice balance between total wiki anarchy and stalin-like control. Note however, that I have a particular affinty for Perl language products in this regard.

Use a Wiki, it should do all you need.

Also, a typical HTTP response header, which can't be compressed, is about 300 bytes (not including TCP/IP packet overhead, which we'll ignore hoping that HTTP/1.1 keepalives are putting it all in one connection...). There were 18 images (actually 20, but junkbuster filtered 2 out for me).

I suggest Twiki. This is a pretty rich set of functions and plug-ins that make it a top notch option.

If it is a little too much, try another wiki as suggested here. The benefits are they can be used in various different fashions, from bulletin boards to help desk info.

SCOOP is also very good, but so would Slashcode if that is the type of setup you are looking for. In the case of a LUG, I would suggest you look at broader option and Wikis are there.

1. TWiki for a perl cgi-bin based wiki
   
2. phpwiki for a php based wiki
   
3. jspwiki
   
4. even palmWiki!
   

Although the article and this comment make some good points, I still have trouble even putting any of this in context. We all know that interoperability and good open standards are a good thing, and that one of the real challenges of the Free/Open Source movement is how to get some level of long-term, whole-system coherency into the design process. Some people seem to be frustrated that this cannot be established top down and imposed on the developer communities from the outside.

I don't even see anyone saying what is and is not a CMS for this discussion, except indirectly. Certainly, slashcode is one, and CmdrTaco and friends have their everything2 site (I've just recently checked it out and still haven't decided if it is very cool, or another time sink that could soak up hours and hours (probably both)). These two systems have radically different purposes and structures, even if they share a lot in terms of technology platforms and such.

So the questions becomes, how do you want them to interoperate? Make linking easy? Support headline applets (slashapp)? Share data infrastructures? Export and import content? And the list goes on. The easy ones that are important to someone are already happening/done. What exactly is the proposal? I can't tell from the article.

To the extent that it is possible, if the developers of indepentdent CMS projects create linkages and exploit synergies by looking at other projects and cherry picking the best parts, we all win. Those of us with unrelated projects to manage would benefit the most, particularly to the extent that this work: 1) reduces mindspace burdens in using CMS, 2) makes it easier to convert to another one of similar purpose and 3) helps us create linkages and establish synergies with other projects.

My point here is that one of the most important uses of CMS (at least for me ;-) is to implement collaboration web sites to support projects, and it sure would be a big help if moving between projects didn't mean learning a whole new set of tools to access the shared content that different projects generate. Also, it is not news to most slashdotters that projects share hosting resources often provided by third parties. As projects evolve and relationships change, your project might be forced to migrate because of changing partners and sponsors, and that might include the CMS system.

For the project that I am working on setting up these resources for (GNUbook, there is a URL, but I don't think it would stand up to slashdot yet. If someone wanted to mirror however ...), I am looking for existing CMS projects that meet my needs. I probably can use/adapt slashcode to our needs, the voting and rating aspects of it are great for allowing the community to self-regulate to a large extent. On the other hand, I really like something more like TWiki because it allows for editing content and storing revision histories is an integral part of it.

Bottom line is that if we are going to have more interop/integration between the various projects, somebody has to take it on and make it their mission. Not everyone has to scratch their itch by developing a new project, and a lot can be done by just stating your case and promoting it to the people who matter (the developers, of course). I also suggest that the developers of CMS systems should work harder at finding the best in what is out there and integrating it with their vision (only where appropriate, of course). That's what this experiment is all about after all, sharing everything, picking the best parts and propagating the best to all the situations that apply. Re-inventing the wheel is for the other guys.

No, that's Twiki. Although, coincidentally there is a Wiki system named Twiki. Go figure.

Alex

http://twiki.org/

A few other Wiki solutions

• Bricolage
• Everything
• TWiki

TWiki (twiki.org) can do this, it's specifically designed for corporate intranets. Every page knows what its "parent" is, and you can see the chain all the way to the main page, and you can also attach binary files to any page. Pages and attachments are kept under version control so you can easily see the history of a topic.

Try TWiki, a perl-based system that adds version control, user accounts and a range of other useful features. The UI is a bit icky, but you can edit the templates to fix that.

I'm still settling on my setup, but on my trusty P200 linux box I run samba and have 2 hard drives; one which gets accessed and the other that gets a copy of its brother every night. It's a great feeling knowing you're backed up.

I considered RAID, but remember that RAID doesn't help you if you accidently delete things.

Lastly, for storing pictures and text that I want access to, I run a Twiki server. It's http visible, searchable, fun, versions everything for you, and is accessible anywhere. I love it.

--matt

Tim Berners-Lee, in his book Weaving the Web and in articles about the Semantic Web talks about his original concept of the web consisting of internal (two-way) as well as external (standard) links, and page editing being interactive; and of how market forces and the then available technology diluted this concept into today's model of the web.
Nowadays, server-based software such as Wiki and variants make collaborative web editing possible, but mass practical application of internal linking is still a long way away, due to issues of trust and synchronization, although steps are being taken in this direction as well.

I've used, successfully, two systems. SourceControl is standard way of doing it. Basically, treat it like a shared filesystem. You have to be very careful about the structure or things tend to get lost. Also, it becomes very easy to make duplicate docs when one gets lost.

I found it easier to use Twiki (which is a WikiWeb-like project). Twiki has built-in version tracking, can store any kind of information, including meta-data, and has pretty advanced search features. We've just started using it at my new company, but I really like it so far.

The only thing Twiki is lacking is proper authorization. Anyone can go in and write over my docs. Of course, it logs that change wit the user's name, so there are decent forensics. Still, I'd rather not have these hassles than be able to track the perpertrator down.

You can get one from here as well as other places.

Put it online, do various things to encourage each department to use it, put some of your own content on it, make sure students know about it and so on. One of the first things to use it for is to start a discussion for feedback about how the campus can be improved.

For more on what a wiki is, try The Portland Repository. I would explain in detail, but after you go through the introductory pages there, anything that I could say would be redundant.

Its used sucessfully by quite a few large corporates for their knowledge bases and support tools. See TWikiSuccessStories for some specifics.

TWiki is based on the WikiWiki concept, but adds version management (including of file attachment), access control, plugins and change notification. It has an active development communtity at TWiki.Codev.

Its used sucessfully by quite a few large corporates for their knowledge bases and support tools. See TWikiSuccessStories for some specifics.

TWiki is based on the WikiWiki concept, but adds version management (including of file attachment), access control, plugins and change notification. It has an active development communtity at TWiki.Codev.

Its used sucessfully by quite a few large corporates for their knowledge bases and support tools. See TWikiSuccessStories for some specifics.

TWiki is based on the WikiWiki concept, but adds version management (including of file attachment), access control, plugins and change notification. It has an active development communtity at TWiki.Codev.

Its used sucessfully by quite a few large corporates for their knowledge bases and support tools. See TWikiSuccessStories for some specifics.

TWiki is based on the WikiWiki concept, but adds version management (including of file attachment), access control, plugins and change notification. It has an active development communtity at TWiki.Codev.

Have a look at something like http://www.twiki.org.

People are using it now in convergences with binary document formats and reversion control. In the future it should have even better integration.

TWiki, available from http://twiki.org supports revision control of all pages, and is specifically designed for corporate intranets. It lets you use HTML if you want to, so you can just convert your existing Word docs as HTML and import them into the system. (But you'll want to not use HTML for new documents.)