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?"

Because we're living, in a wiki world...

[AKAImBatman]

[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.

freeware?!?!

[Gandalfar]

Freeware ?!?!?!?

It's even better then that. It's GPL! [gnu.org]. How can slashdot write about GPL'ed software that it's freeware?

What the article is really about

[RealAlaskan]

It seems to me that what the article is really about is how today's dot-coms are not squandering money: few employees, low overhead, low capital needs, and so on.

If that's a Wiki World, that's where we came from and that's where we're headed.

If Wiki World means that everyone will be using wiki's for everything, well, maybe not.

Wiki *is* revolution

[a_hofmann]

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 [wikipedia.org] or the original c2.com wiki [c2.com], 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)...

wiki confusing

[yohan1701]

Maybe it is me but evertime I see a site the has wiki for an FAQ I cringe. I can't seem to find anything on a wiki. ... of course I can't find an example at the moment. Usually though there doesn't seem to be any content.

Are we Headed for a Wiki World?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not as long as they call them 'wiki's

No serious executive is going to propose starting a 'wiki'. It's just too, er, well, it's a term a man would want to use. A third grader, sure, a girl, of course, but really: 'wiki'? Puhleeze. It reminds one of a luau, or croquet.

Wikis in corporate environments

[poopie]

As much as I like wikis, in corporate environments, I'd say they're frowned upon as being cluttered, messy, and chaotic.

Some people would call the features of a wiki a disavantage...

"you mean anyone can deface the website?"

"who approved this content?"

"all these links are confusing to everyone - can we have less content?"

"the site needs to look like this other site - we have corporate website standards"

Notes vs. Wiki

[Zebra_X]

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.

Re:You mean the robot from Buck Rogers?

[OECD]

That's Twiki [wikipedia.org]. (Which you can find by consulting the Wikipedia!)

lots of misinformation through wiki

[kaan]

I totally agree with the parent post - wiki is good for internal use, maybe sharing company information, etc. But as soon as you turn it to the global audience with the intention of being a general information source, it becomes a worse information reference than any random web page out there. In fact, it might be worse, because random web pages that talk about things like "astronauts never walked on the moon", etc., aren't culled together and presented as fact the way that wiki presents all information. It's been shown repeatedly that there is little to no validation of real-world wiki information. I've read several stories (some here on /.) about people making totally bogus wiki entries that other people support.

Don't get me wrong, I think wiki has it's place, but experience indicates that it should not serve as a generic information source for the general population. At least, not in it's current form. If they hired a squadron of editors and fact checkers, things might be better, but that's not how wiki is supposed to work...

Yuck

[blamanj]

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.

Re:Lotus Notes, Kill Bill, UI Hall of Shame, etc..

[autiger]

Dude, get with the current program - that UI Hall of Shame thing is based on a version of Notes that was three major versions ago (about to be four) and like five years old at this point. WHy don't you mention more recent reviews/articles (like all the awards the latest version of Notes has won) instead of recycling some tired, old hack job.

wikis in isolation aren't enough

[wfmcwalter]

Wikis are fantastic for collaboratively building documents, and their potential in professional applications is great. But a wiki in isolation isn't enough, and building your collaborative system solely on a wiki is going to be an unpleasant experience, at least in points.

Wikis are rotten for threaded conversations - stuff gets overwritten, moved around, refactored, deleted, and it can be horrible to follow a thread (essentially everyone has to follow a layout which indicated the thread structure). This is a job for a message board or mailing list - to make this work properly with the wiki, you need single-signon and workable links between the board and the wiki (plain http links are okay, but smarter linking would be better). Ideally the board will support the wiki syntax, or will support embedding wiki "pages" into posts.

Also, it's hard to automatically syndicate or publish a wiki, either via RSS/ATOM or a mailing list. MediaWiki has a teeny bit of syndication support, but not for ordinary content pages. This issue is when to push a set of changes

Integration with your corporate email system, bug/issue-track system (or CRM system), maybe instant messaging system, or maybe VCS system would also be a great thing. This integration is really the "thesis" of Lotus Notes - that collaboration takes places in many forms, and that rather than force users into one paradigm it's better to make all the modes work smoothly with one another; it's really a damn shame Notes hasn't lived up to the promise this integration has.

Somebody Explain Wikis, Please

[waldoj]

I've been blogging since '96. A website developer since '93. Developed LAMP websites since '99. A Linux user since '94. I'm no dope. My Slashdot UID is so low, people have offered to pay me for it.

My geekdom established, I just don't get Wikis. Anybody can edit documents, the Wiki tracks changes, but somebody's in charge and can approve or roll back changes. Some sites use them for FAQs, and they suck. What else is there? What am I missing? What makes these things so damned special?

I'm not agitating here -- I really don't get it, and I'm certain that I must just not be in possession of all the facts. Can somebody enlighten me?

-Waldo Jaquith

Re:Wiki *is* revolution

[spektr]

If "Wikis" were the source of information hundreds of years ago, we'd all still think that the world is flat, Earth was created in 7 days, and that black people are inferior.

Hundreds of years ago, people relied on what their neighbours and the priest in the church said, because they hadn't access to any information beside of that. Many people believed for hundreds of years that the earth was flat, because they heard what the authorities said (or their neighbours who heard it from the authorities).

"Majority rules" is not a way to determine whether or not information is valid.

"Authority rules" isn't the way either.

I vote for "Common sense" and a good understanding of how information technolgies work - past and present.

Re:Because we're living, in a wiki world...

[MasterOfUniverse]

umm..pardon my ignorance...but how exactly wiki can replace lotus notes??? please care to explain..

Re:UI Hall of Shame - give it a rest please

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to disagree, the later versions may have a prettier start page, but the guts of the application remains CRAP. I have never seen a worse UI, even in Microsoft products. My company finally switched to Outlook a month ago, thank you Lord.

Re:Lotus Notes, Kill Bill, UI Hall of Shame, etc..

[BorgDrone]

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.

How exactly does Notes/Domino compare with Exchange ?
Outlook/Exchange is a groupware suite, Notes/Domino is a platform, which happens to come bundled with a groupware suite.

Who needs Lotus when you have pop3 and a text file every can edit...at least it would work most of the time.

If all you need is a mail and agenda, but how exactly do build products like QuickPlace and LearningSpace with just pop3 and a text file ?

Re:Wiki *is* revolution

[DogDude]

I vote for "Common sense" and a good understanding of how information technolgies work - past and present.

"Common sense" doesn't cover advanced science, and in some cases, even basic science. "Common sense" also doesn't take into account new discoveries/inventions.

Case in point. I have a pet supply shop. The vast majority of people and veterinarians *think* that they understand animal nutrition, when in reality, they don't. The whole "science" of veterinary nutrition is driven by commercial interests at the university level. There are only a few people who have studied the science and know the facts. 1000 people may *think* that they know the facts, but without doing real research, they have no way of knowing what is true. In reality, a few people have the credibility to address such a topic, because the "masses" are simply wrong.

Want proof? Go to several local veterinarians. Count how many carry "Science Diet" by Hills. Ask the vets why they carry it. They'll tell you because it's the best food, which in turn, they also tell their customers. In reality, this is completely false. But a Wiki would agree with the veterinarians and the public on this.

A Wiki allows no room for dissent, which is how all great discoveries came about: dissent. All a Wiki is good for continuing to expand "public knowledge", with little regard for its correctness. And if a new idea were to come around that is contrary to popular opinion, it's going to get drowned out by ignorance. Quite honestly, I don't even understand how this theory is supposed to be good. I'm not going to trust random anonymous person to explain particle physics from me. I'm only going to accept that information from somebody that I know is knowledgeable on the subject.

This is what wiki's were designed for

[shimmin]

Quickly developing documentation in an environment where a large number of users collectively know everything that needs to be known, but it is not exactly clear who knows what, and no single user knows exactly where to begin with documenting what they know. The wiki helps in this situation by (1) being a central depository of knowledge (2) directing creativity: you don't know what other people might find useful of your store of knowledge, but then someone else starts writing about it. (3) killing self-consciousness over style: the wiki is inherently inconsistent in style, without a clear starting point or index. This has its drawbacks, but also has the advantage that new contributions can be written without regard to the grand scheme of things. I think the wiki model is great in the size range where the user community is too large to efficiently shout across to the next cubicle to the answer for your question, but too small to cost-effectively document everything in some formal fashion.

Re:UI Hall of Shame - give it a rest please

[Anonymous Coward]

> for development of ad-hoc applications involving sharing information among teams and for publishing to the web

Notes is really good at none of these things. Yes, the simple things are really simple (@ formulas). But the complex things are horridly painful and lock you into a very insular environment. The web environment is pure ass (@ formulas.)

Any time you find yourself spending longer than 1 day developing something in Notes, you should just grow a pair and use a real RDBMS-based system. Even newbie PHP code is more pleasant that working with Notes.

In terms of the UI, they still have been completely unwilling to wipe the slate of 20 years of lousy ideas, and thus the product is still a terrible mishmash of obscure functions and hidden settings.

Wrong answers to wrong questions

[Ars-Fartsica]

(1) The wiki does not provide business process automation.

Why would a wiki want to perform the operations better provided by another piece of software? (perl, python, etc etc etc)

(2) The wiki does not provide e-mail or calendaring functions.

Why would a wiki want to perform the operations better provided by another piece of software? (name your calendaring app)

(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).

Why would a wiki want to perform the operations better provided by another piece of software? (Apache, MySQL, etc)

Re:Unequivocally "YES"

[Saucepan]

Ahh, I see what you mean. Yes, it would be nice if everyone was willing and able to use XML correctly. But we have to work with the humans we have, not the humans we wish we had. In the real world people demonstrably will not take the time to specify metadata correctly even when it's made relatively easy to do so, and the richer the metadata vocabulary the less likely people are to use it properly.

To me, one of the lessons of Google's success is that the software is going to have to do a lot more than just meet the humans half way on this one. If you are going to end up with a soup of natural language documents no matter what you try to do, you may as well get good at searching it intelligently.

Re:Yuck

[danila]

I don't understand why there still no way to edit Wikis in a frontend. It would be a perfect project for a Firefox extension - an integrated "RTF-like" editor that would allow you to click anywhere on the page (or ctrl+click, or press a hotkey and click) and start typing (of course, only on wikiservers. The frontend would then take care of actually generating the diff and sending it to the server for integration, as well as for locking, conflict resolution, etc. This would have a nice side effect of making it possible to edit all different (compliant) Wikis, even based on different WikiEngines with a single interface.

Re:Wiki *is* revolution

[DogDude]

Well, ok... let's look at non-facts, or things that can't be proven... I still don't necessarily see how the "masses" should necessarily hold any more sway than experts in the field. Without some kind of authority, there's still no way to say that the masses that do the editing in said "wiki" are more likely to be correct than an expert who has spent a good portion of his/her life studying the subject. Now, it's entirely possible that the "expert" is in fact wrong, but I would think that an expert would still pull more weight than average joe. When you have many people editing the same article, there's nothing stopping a few experts from being drowned out by the masses, especially if the masses are convinced that they are correct. If anything, I would think that a "wiki" would eventually become a large collection of "common knowledge" that may or may not be correct. I see it as being an extreme of the worst aspect of the Net... people read it online, and they're convinced that it's true, without looking at the source.

Case in point... I had a customer come in a week ago looking for vegetarian cat food. I told her that we don't sell it because cats are carnivores... they'd get sick and possibly die if force fed a vegetarian diet. She told me that she read it at "somethingaboutveggiecats.com", so it MUST be true. She insisted. She's also wrong. That whole web site (if it exists) is wrong. All of the people who write for that web site are wrong. I don't care how many people believe it, the fact is that cats are carnivores (because research by experts have established this fact), and a vegetarian diet is not healthy for them. But because she read it online, and there's a following of people attempting to force feed their cats vegetarian diets, she assumes it's true, even though I have spent the past several years researching and talking to people (experts and lay people) about pet nutrition. I've heard countless stories, and have more experience than most people ever will in this admittedly uninteresting subject. The same thing will happen with a "wiki". The end product will be a dumping ground for what people think is true, with little to no regard for the real truth (or what is most likely to be true).

Re:Because we're living, in a wiki world...

[barzok]

Many companies use Notes as "knowledge repositories" or similar. Trouble is, it's not a relational database (Lotus calls them "databases" but they're not, really), and any linking between content is purely manual - and very easy to break.

Replication of data and a lack of common sense almost seems to be encouraged by these Notes setups. At least from my perspective as a user. I just got through with an exercise w/ one Notes database. Every person associated with a system needed to be put on the form for the system, and then we had to enter their home, work and cell phone numbers. What if those people move? Now we have to go back and update all those documents. Why not just have a link back to their "person document" when I type FirstnameLastname so that only one item ever has to be updated? Why not have automatic links between systems ("system A depends on system B" creates a link to the other system)? For each server for a system, we had to list the software that needed to be on the box, including version & licensing information. Why not just link to a document about that software, with the licensing information there? I'm pretty sure we have the same OS license for all 150 Windows 2000 servers we have.

Anything that allows faster access to information, and automatically builds cross-references is a huge win.

Re:Wiki *is* revolution

[Khalid]

A very intersting point of view. But I think this not specific to Wiki, it's common to all mass media. The mass media convey the opinion of the majority of people, this one the reasons why the society is very slow to change it's opinion and beliefs.

This can be somehow be related to what Thomas Kuhn has called the paradigm shift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift (thanks Wikipedia after all :) ). Wikis need a way to promote new and subversive ideas :). Every might agree about some basic beliefs, but people need sometime their "Copernician revolution".

The solution?

[asuwish4]

I don't think WIKI's are the answer. They're good for groups interested in specific things. I'm in a guitar amplifier Yahoo! (email) group and for all the info that gets exchanged, it's cumbersome to track down old info. If there was a clean wiki that each user could to contribute to, then the info is more useable.(perhaps) I hate Lotus Notes. I have to use it everyday at work which consistently reminds me of how not to make a GUI.

I think the real trick is for contributed information to be intelligently stored in a knowledgebase-type of app that has extensive search capabilities and a simple, uncluttered, intuitive interface.

Does anything like this exist?

.:Chuck:.

Re:Lotus Notes, Kill Bill, UI Hall of Shame, etc..

[vawlk]

Sigh..

I'm so sick of people basing notes. Just the suggestion to use a Wiki instead of Notes shows that the author hasn't a clue to what Notes is.

I'd be the first to admit that using Notes purely for email is insane. Bloat to the bloatest bloat.
But it does something very well:

It's not the best email client
It's not the best web server
It's not the best db platform
It's not the best nntp server
It's not the best mail server
It's not the best c&s
It's not the best IM
It's not the best CMS
It's not the best CRM

However, it IS all of the above. Personally I enjoy not having to fight 10 different systems to work together. I gladly accept a few limitations of each individual service for an end result that is integrated AND portable. I can have every bit of information and functionality when disconnected and out of the office as I do when in the office. Can you say workflow?

The biggest problem with Notes/Domino is the limited amount of experienced developers and administrators. 99% of all problems I see with Notes/Dom is implementation. And if anyone is still comparing a Wiki to Notes, they had a bad implementation.