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Are we Headed for a Wiki World?
Wikipedian writes "BusinessWeek
asks are
we headed for a Wiki World?. With
US-based SocialText
using their wiki to leverage just $600K in capital, and
European competitor Team Notepad,
not to mention freeware alternatives like
TWiki and
MoinMoin
is the whole world going to be using
wikis
instead of the proprietary dinosaurs like
Lotus Notes?"
[I]s the whole world going to be using wikis instead of the proprietary dinosaurs like Lotus Notes?
God, I hope so. Lotus Notes is a beast. It stops working whenever it feels like it, and occasionally corrupts the database just to make your day.
OTOH, I don't know if TWiki is the answer. Something like it perhaps, but TWiki itself tends to be unwieldily, visually confusing, and ugly. PHPWiki solved many of the problems by taking the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!) path, but lost a lot of functionality along the way. MediaWiki (the Wiki that runs Wikipedia) is probably the best compromise, but it lacks some of the security features that make TWiki viable in a corporate environment.
If I had to choose, I'd probably say that extending MediaWiki would result in the best option. MediaWiki is clean, easy to use, and (always important) extremely feature rich. The advantage is that it got that way through several rewrites and careful coding by its maintainers. The disadvantage is that another rewrite might leave you stranded with a difficult upgrade path.
One way or another, a Wiki design is definitely the right idea for corporate "document" databases.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
If Lotus Notes was a character on Kill Bill, it would go something like this...
e ring/iarchitect/lotus.htm
Lotus Notes: Larry, there ain't no mail out there!
Larry Gomez : There ain't no mail out there... Larry... What's your point? That you're not needed here?
Lotus Notes: My point is, I'm the groupware... and there ain't no mail out there to deliver!
Larry Gomez : You're saying that the reason... that you're not doing the job... that I'm... paying you to do... is, that you don't have a job to do? Is that what you're saying? What are you trying to convince me of, exactly? That you're as useless as an asshole right here? Well guess what, Lotus Notes. I think, you just fucking convinced me!
Really, I have to use Lotus at my current job and have had to use it at previous ones too. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss MS Exchange Server. Who needs Lotus when you have pop3 and a text file every can edit...at least it would work most of the time. Never before have I used such a frustrating, stupid, ugly, ineffective product. Give me a ham sandwich over Lotus Notes.
Also of interest, an in-depth analysis of Lotus Notes on the User Interface Hall of Shame.
http://digilander.libero.it/chiediloapippo/Engine
Freeware ?!?!?!?
It's even better then that. It's GPL!. How can slashdot write about GPL'ed software that it's freeware?
IMHO the Wiki concept is a revolution that's not comparable to any other development since the invention of the Web itself by Sir Lee... Think of Wikipedia or the original c2.com wiki, both examples of the success of this idea. These sites are driven by the users themselves, and are able to gather astonishing amounts of high quality information.
The beautiful thing about Wikis is that they scale to any size. I use Wiki for personal information management. My company uses Wiki as a kind of rapid CMS (which effectively replaced Lotus Notes in that function btw), as do the big sites I've mentioned with millions of users.
Some custom extensions can turn Wiki into tech unbeatable by any commercial product - because the concept just works (tm)...
I'm a little confused - how are wiki's and notes even remotely similar? One is a groupware application for scheduling, contacts, and mail. It is also a development platform for forms and workflow. I didn't think that it was generally used for content management or information management. I mean, I don't like notes or anything but I'm just not sure if that's an accurate comparison. Correct me if I'm wrong.
(1) The wiki does not provide business process automation. Notes can be used to automatically forward items on to the "next responsible party" - it's a controlled, push mechanism. Can't be matched by a wiki.
(2) The wiki does not provide e-mail or calendaring functions.
(3) The wiki does not provide off-line capability. Notes provides an off-line capability that allows you to replicate data back into the database once you connect
(4) Notes gives me the capability to set up my own private area (database) where I propose the security list, that resides on a server, without the intervention of an administrator or anyone technologically savvy. (Ours is called Database-oh-matic).
Net: Notes lives!
Instiki is by far the easiest wiki to setup and configure that I've tried. It would only take you a few minutes to try it out. It's especially easy to install on OSX and after doing so it will show up on your toolbar. And it has pdf and TeX output.
I've recently started a new job, at a managed services company. I've started my own wiki, initially MoinMoin but now MediaWiki, and it's the most useful thing I've ever had for work.
I've put into it everything I've discovered in the two months I've been there, and so has a coworker. Previously there was a lot of formal documentation, but it's hard to leverage in a rush.
The wiki gets right to the heart of what we have to do on a daily basis, and is updated almost constantly to reflect a deeper understanding of the system and when things change, whereas formal documentation seems to be missed and skipped over.
Thank god for Wikis.
While replacing Notes with a standards-based environment is a step in the right direction, mark up in Wikiland really sucks.
IMHO, the way to go is to combine the writableness of wikis with a reasonable WYSIWYG editor. The "do I use three brackets here or only two" issues with wikis are just too annoying.
Notes has had three - count 'em, 3 - major releases since that stuff was put up there, and many, if not all of the points it makes have been addressed. Notes is still one of the best platforms around for collaboration, for development of ad-hoc applications involving sharing information among teams and for publishing to the web. Notes/Domino continues to have just as much market share as Outlook/Exchange - and in fact you can even use Outlook as a client to a Domino back-end server.
Also, it continues to evolve - the next release, number 7, is in beta now. Customers' investment in applications developed under previous releases is preserved as well as ever (not something Microsoft can claim to do), and there's a roadmap that takes it towards a bright new future in the shape of the IBM Workplace.
You're right in that business critical documentation should be owned and edited by only a small team. Making this documentation available to a wider audience is where a Wiki comes to the fore.
I've been running a Wiki in our department at work now for a couple of months. It was slow to start with, but people are starting to catch on now. Find a better way to do something? Add it to the Wiki. Know where all the spare printer paper is kept? Add it to the Wiki. Know the location on the network drive where the crucial licence agreements are kept? Add it to the Wiki. The list just keeps going on.
Wikis are great for sharing knowledge. Like any knowledge sharing initiative they require a knowledge champion to oversee new additions, assist users having problems and generally tidying up. They are a great collaborative tool when you have everyone's buy in. A real leveller in the workplace too. The newest temp can correct the managing director - anonymously if needs be.
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