Comments on: The problem with Wikis http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/ Utterly random, incoherent and disjointed rants and ramblings... Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:45:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.5 by: ikaruga3064 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9492 Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:43:31 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9492 Oh, you want a wiki for work? Been there before -- here's a quick summary: MoinMoin -- very nifty indeed (use it for my personal wiki) PROS: WYSIWIG CONS: slows to a crawl with 100+ pages -- this is bad for a work wiki. Trust me, you'll get to that many pages very quickly on a work wiki. Twiki PROS: WYSIWIG editor + tons of extensions CONS: many of those extensions don't work. Hard as heck to set up and it seems to be dying. You may want to try MindTouch -- it looks really sweet -- that's going to be my next work wiki... As for textile vs markdown vs mediawiki... I used mediawiki in the past with moinmoin (it's similar). I now use textile because it's way more readable. (When you read an article, *bold* interrupts a lot less than '''bold italic''' ... As for the h1, h2, headings -- most people are already familiar with them if they use Word or OpenOffice.) Oh, you want a wiki for work? Been there before — here’s a quick summary:

MoinMoin — very nifty indeed (use it for my personal wiki)

PROS: WYSIWIG
CONS: slows to a crawl with 100+ pages — this is bad for a work wiki. Trust me, you’ll get to that many pages very quickly on a work wiki.

Twiki

PROS: WYSIWIG editor + tons of extensions
CONS: many of those extensions don’t work. Hard as heck to set up and it seems to be dying.

You may want to try MindTouch — it looks really sweet — that’s going to be my next work wiki…

As for textile vs markdown vs mediawiki… I used mediawiki in the past with moinmoin (it’s similar). I now use textile because it’s way more readable. (When you read an article, *bold* interrupts a lot less than ‘'’bold italic”’ … As for the h1, h2, headings — most people are already familiar with them if they use Word or OpenOffice.)

]]> by: Luke Maciak http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9437 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:16:45 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9437 [quote comment="9436"]Oh, my! I wish I had the luxury to debate wiki-syntax at work! As for now, I still fight to convince my colleagues that we do indeed need a wiki (for internal knowledge base too, working on GIS system)... Wait, no... I'm still trying to make them <em>understand</em> what a wiki is, in the first place! Jeez![/quote] LOL! Actually my coworkers don't know they want a Wiki. They just want, you know - like a collection of knowledge. Like an information thing, where you can like click and expand things in more detail. They want like huge, huge amount of documents, writeups, files, samples in there and have it like organized and linked and searchable. And make it so that it can be expanded by anyone - not just programmers. They are leaving "implementation details" to me cause I know stuff. To me they are describing a wiki - but then again, this may just be a temporary insanity or something. Oh, and I believe they are sort of expecting me to wave a magic wand and populate the wiki with (and I quote) "unbelievable amount of information" without actually allocating time and man power to contribute to it. Unfortunately there is no way for me to do it, because I do not possess the information they want to organize or catalog, because my expertise is in IT/Software Development and not in the inns and outs of Asset Based Lending related stuff (whatever they want to put in the wiki). ST/op said:

Oh, my! I wish I had the luxury to debate wiki-syntax at work! As for now, I still fight to convince my colleagues that we do indeed need a wiki (for internal knowledge base too, working on GIS system)…
Wait, no… I’m still trying to make them understand what a wiki is, in the first place! Jeez!

LOL! Actually my coworkers don’t know they want a Wiki. They just want, you know - like a collection of knowledge. Like an information thing, where you can like click and expand things in more detail. They want like huge, huge amount of documents, writeups, files, samples in there and have it like organized and linked and searchable. And make it so that it can be expanded by anyone - not just programmers. They are leaving “implementation details” to me cause I know stuff.

To me they are describing a wiki - but then again, this may just be a temporary insanity or something.

Oh, and I believe they are sort of expecting me to wave a magic wand and populate the wiki with (and I quote) “unbelievable amount of information” without actually allocating time and man power to contribute to it. Unfortunately there is no way for me to do it, because I do not possess the information they want to organize or catalog, because my expertise is in IT/Software Development and not in the inns and outs of Asset Based Lending related stuff (whatever they want to put in the wiki).

]]> by: ST/op http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9436 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:45:34 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9436 Oh, my! I wish I had the luxury to debate wiki-syntax at work! As for now, I still fight to convince my colleagues that we do indeed need a wiki (for internal knowledge base too, working on GIS system)... Wait, no... I'm still trying to make them <em>understand</em> what a wiki is, in the first place! Jeez! Oh, my! I wish I had the luxury to debate wiki-syntax at work! As for now, I still fight to convince my colleagues that we do indeed need a wiki (for internal knowledge base too, working on GIS system)…
Wait, no… I’m still trying to make them understand what a wiki is, in the first place! Jeez!

]]> by: vacri http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9435 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:19:20 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9435 I've used Mediawiki, Trac's wiki, and some ultra lightweight wikis (the kind that use CamelCase... ugh) I love mediawiki, it just feels intuitive to me, and although the ''''' thing is daft, the rest of it feels right. What I love about it is the bullet/numbered points thing. I write a lot of dot point how-tos and troubleshooting guides, and mediawiki just seamlessly nests them along with some other simple formatting. It just makes sense to me. Trac is like a bastardised, harder to use mediawiki. To make a numbered bullet point in mw, it's just "#". In Trace, it's " 1. " - you have to have a space before and after and a period... one wonders why they bother to even manage the numbering for you... As for Heron, I was on Gutsy on an nvidia card. Everything was working and I had Compiz working nicely. Having had backups I decided a totally fresh install was a better way to do the Heron install... which left me with a 640x480 screen. After two hours of troubleshooting, dpkg-reconfiguring, determined to 'end-user' fix it without manually editing the xorg.conf, I finally gave up and looked in it... and it was nearly empty despite several attempts at regeneration. Pulled across an xorg.conf from a debian box and it all worked magically at that point. You haven't lived until you've been <i>limited</i> to 320x240 on a 24" screen in gnome... with it's mandatory wharves... I’ve used Mediawiki, Trac’s wiki, and some ultra lightweight wikis (the kind that use CamelCase… ugh)

I love mediawiki, it just feels intuitive to me, and although the ‘”'’ thing is daft, the rest of it feels right. What I love about it is the bullet/numbered points thing. I write a lot of dot point how-tos and troubleshooting guides, and mediawiki just seamlessly nests them along with some other simple formatting. It just makes sense to me.

Trac is like a bastardised, harder to use mediawiki. To make a numbered bullet point in mw, it’s just “#”. In Trace, it’s ” 1. ” - you have to have a space before and after and a period… one wonders why they bother to even manage the numbering for you…

As for Heron, I was on Gutsy on an nvidia card. Everything was working and I had Compiz working nicely. Having had backups I decided a totally fresh install was a better way to do the Heron install… which left me with a 640×480 screen. After two hours of troubleshooting, dpkg-reconfiguring, determined to ‘end-user’ fix it without manually editing the xorg.conf, I finally gave up and looked in it… and it was nearly empty despite several attempts at regeneration. Pulled across an xorg.conf from a debian box and it all worked magically at that point.

You haven’t lived until you’ve been limited to 320×240 on a 24″ screen in gnome… with it’s mandatory wharves…

]]> by: Alphast http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9434 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:14:55 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9434 We use <a href="http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence" rel="nofollow">Confluence, from Atlassian</a>. Very nice, has a WYSIWYG interface (that none of us uses) and is lightweight enough. Also, it integrates with various other applications, which is a major plus in business use. The only thing I don't like, it's their way of entering links, which is reversed from other Wikis I use (title first, URL next). We use Confluence, from Atlassian. Very nice, has a WYSIWYG interface (that none of us uses) and is lightweight enough. Also, it integrates with various other applications, which is a major plus in business use. The only thing I don’t like, it’s their way of entering links, which is reversed from other Wikis I use (title first, URL next).

]]> by: Dan http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9433 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:31:44 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9433 @Luke: I've been told that Luminotes looks like a cross between Google Notebook and TiddlyWiki. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing. :) @Luke: I’ve been told that Luminotes looks like a cross between Google Notebook and TiddlyWiki. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing. )

]]> by: Luke Maciak http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9432 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:30:28 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9432 Yeah, tinkering and breaking things can be fun. But I'd rather not have to fix a b0rken system it while under a deadlines. I nothing should really happen but then again I'd rather not risk it. :) Yeah, tinkering and breaking things can be fun. But I’d rather not have to fix a b0rken system it while under a deadlines. I nothing should really happen but then again I’d rather not risk it. )

]]> by: Travis McCrea http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9430 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:51:19 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9430 @Luke - This... coming from you? Mr "blah blah blah, thats half the fun about linux is if you break it... you just have to fix it.. .blah blah blah, never be afraid to experiment blah blah blah" guy? and have you tried: http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/ I dig it @Luke - This… coming from you? Mr “blah blah blah, thats half the fun about linux is if you break it… you just have to fix it.. .blah blah blah, never be afraid to experiment blah blah blah” guy?

and have you tried:
http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/

I dig it

]]> by: Luke Maciak http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9426 Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:23:05 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9426 [quote comment="9423"]I thought firefox 3 was default on the new Ubuntu... it was for me.[/quote] I'm still on Gutsy. Kinda scared that an upgrade to Hardy will wreak havoc on my work laptop which I need for working and work related stuff. :P <strong>@Dan</strong> - hey, nice! Very Gmail like in appearance. :) Travis McCrea said:

I thought firefox 3 was default on the new Ubuntu… it was for me.

I’m still on Gutsy. Kinda scared that an upgrade to Hardy will wreak havoc on my work laptop which I need for working and work related stuff. P

@Dan - hey, nice! Very Gmail like in appearance. )

]]> by: Dan http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9424 Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:55:01 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-problem-with-wikis/#comment-9424 I don't think WYSIWYG wikis are only for n00bs. I develop a WYSIWYG personal wiki called Luminotes at http://luminotes.com and many of my users are familiar with both WYSIWYG and traditional wiki syntax. But they prefer WYSIWYG for the reasons mentioned in the post above: There are simply too many incompatible wiki syntaxes out there. I don’t think WYSIWYG wikis are only for n00bs. I develop a WYSIWYG personal wiki called Luminotes at http://luminotes.com and many of my users are familiar with both WYSIWYG and traditional wiki syntax. But they prefer WYSIWYG for the reasons mentioned in the post above: There are simply too many incompatible wiki syntaxes out there.

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