Making Wikis Work

Jonathan Boutelle talks about how he made a wiki work with his software developers:

  • Start off maintaining existing documents
  • Make it easy to login
  • Insist on Wysiwyg

So, so true. The first two could be a little more generalized: Start with a reason to use the wiki and make it easy. Making it easy encompasses insisting on Wysiwyg but the editor is the most important touch-point of a wiki that it's worth stating separately.

I've previously commented on this kind of thing before, so it's good to see others learning the same lessons. Of course, I'd suggest using a really good editor like EditLive! for Java, but I am somewhat biased…

2 Responses to “Making Wikis Work”

  1. Symphonious » Scoble Wants a Wiki Says:

    [...] So Scoble's looking for a wiki, seems to have gotten a few popular suggestions. Since he wants it hosted I can't really offer anything - I don't have the server space or sysadmin knowledge to handle something of Scoble's popularity. Despite that, can I recommend that you make the quality of the editor your most important criteria? It will make a huge difference to the adoption rate of the wiki. I've discussed this before: Wiki Syntax Considered Harmful and Making Wikis Work. [...]


  2. Symphonious » Wikipatterns.com Says:

    [...] a spot for it, but given my obvious bias I'm concerned it would just look like spam. I've previously hinted at our success in adopting a wiki by integrating our editor (we started off just using wiki [...]


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