Wiki as a Knowledge Base
[email protected] 2006-10-23 Overview
● Mediawiki, Wikimedia, Wikipedia oder wie? ● Enterprise Wiki ● Current OSS Wiki Options ● Experiences Personal Info
● Electronic Business ● Development Processes Cooperation – Financial Services – Hardware – Administrative – Network Tech – Change Mgt – Content ● Collaboration ● Wikimedia – Wikipedia – WikiVersity – WikiBooks Wikimedia Foundation
Imagine a world where everybody is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
● Some of the projects – Wikipedia: encyclopaedia – Commons: language independent artefacts – Wikibooks: textbooks and manuals – Wikiversity: learning material – Wikiquotes: quotations from notable people – Wikisource: books, poetry, ... Wikimedia CH
● Swiss chapter of Wikimedia foundation ● shares goals ● allows tax exempt donations in CH Enterprise Wiki
● Consider when wiki is internal – Glue, does NOT replace existing systems – Track changes – Access control – Wysiwyg
● Use wiki's on the net – Learn with Wikiversity – Refer to Wikipedia Content Ideas
● “readme” ● work together to replacement prepare content ● FAQ ● link to source code ● link to web apps ● glue requirement – ● link to file system source code – ● link to CMS release ● link to DMS ● link to task Basic guideline: management ● If you are not sure where to put it, put it in the wiki. Types of People, Numbers
● People are different – Edit vs. Read vs. Ignore ● 10% “Edit People” – Structure vs. Search ● 25% “Search People” – Open vs. Closed ● esp. Mgt tends to be closed
● Growth rate example, 1.5 yrs from start: – 5000 persons could edit/view – <1000 persons did edit/view – <600 views daily – <100 edits daily Mediawiki
● best known ● easy to find advanced formatting examples ● MySql based ● advanced wiki admin functionality ● proven to scale
● no fine grained access control (never?) ● no Wysiwyg yet ● more complex to setup, integrate MoinMoin
● Wysiwyg ● fine grained access control ● file based ● synchronize instances (laptop – company) ● easy install ● skins ● plugins
● scales less, resp. depends on filesystem Trac
● Syntax 95% MoinMoin ● Tickets: task, issues, ... ● Milestones ● Link to source code, change set diff ● SQLight, MySql, Postgres ● Plugins
● Not yet Wysiwyg ● No fine grained permissions yet ● Complex to install Technics, Admin
● Create, integrate – Interwiki-Links – People directory – Company style guide – Navigation, ToC, Spaces, Instances
● Admin, maintain – Access rights concept – Concept for maintaining content, helping editors
● Non-wiki issues – Have direct linkable software – Have stable links, maybe with key Experiences (1)
● People are the key – train at the beginning – support on demand – guide regularly – management support is important ● Link and Search are the key – minimize number of wiki instances – don't force one wiki instance, link – integrate in company search engine ● Think about strategies to fill wiki, e.g. – have one “contains everything” instance – mail wiki links not content Experiences (2)
● Pay attention to Structure vs. Search – create structure pages – Table of Contents ● Don't wait for wiki software feature X ● Quality Wiki contents will be never finished nor perfect!
● Kaizen - improve continuously – don't do “clean restarts” – keep links stable (important for interlinks) Experiences (3)
● use Wysiwyg to copy-paste from browser/word/other wiki ● use text editor on longer wiki pages ● use product independent links: – http://coop.ch/coopwiki/CoOp – not: http://coop.ch/mediawiki/CoOp References
● http://wikimediafoundation.org ● http://wikimedia.ch
● http://mediawiki.org
● http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de
● http://trac.edgewall.com ● http://trac-hacks.org