Re: A documentation wiki, anyone?

Subject: Re: A documentation wiki, anyone?
From: Gale Stafford <gstafford -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 11:09:44 -0600


I use a wiki to develop all my technical documentation. I happen to
use twiki, which is quite popular in collaborative business
environments. Here are some strong points and benefits to using a
wiki.

1. I access my documentation pages in the wiki via my web browser.
Depending on the day and my appointments, I may be working in my
office on my PC, or in a random location on campus, documenting with
my laptop. Doesnt matter where I am because most of the university
buildings here have wireless access. (I'm at the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign). Coffee shops here also have free wireless
access.

2. I have a revision history. I can go back and view the first version
or any version in between.

3. Since I develop requirements definitions, our wiki is great because
my peers can review the requirements documentation at any time, and
comment on it. I work with a small team of four software developers,
one project lead / business analyst, and a project manager.

Here are a few challenges to using a wiki:

1. Many wikis simply provide you with a collaboration platform. It's
very open. You have to create a structure by having some agreed upon
processes in the team.

2. If there's no plan to your wiki, it can quickly get messy, out of
control, and disorganized.

3. Free support may be hard to use. With twiki for example, a
community support knowledge base is there but not always easy to
search. You can post new questions but
there's no guarantee that anyone will actually answer your question.

Folks who are interested in wikis might want to check out
http://twiki.org/ - I chose twiki because there are lots of plugins
and add-ons being developed by the community. And of course the whole
system is free but you do "pay" with your time investment. Overall, a
good tool.

Gale Stafford
Documentation Specialist
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 22:22:03 -0600, David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
> I was intrigued this evening to run across an article involving the
> use of OpenOffice Writer with a wiki designed specifically for
> documentation.
>
> The article is at
> http://applications.linux.com/applications/05/01/10/232235.shtml?tid=49&tid=13
>
> DokuWiki is at http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki
>
> Since the wiki includes the ability to restrict those who can add,
> edit or delete to specified users and since it recognizes XHTML, CSS,
> and various other standards, I think it might be an interesting
> approach for those activities that want to have their documentation on
> the Web.
>
> Further, it supports printing and, therefore, it should support fairly
> simple .pdf creation as well.
>
> I thought this might be worth looking into, especially for smaller
> groups and for Web-based products.
>
> David
>

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References:
A documentation wiki, anyone?: From: David Neeley

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