Wiki Choices, Sharepoint Voices
I was talking with a PM at another company the other day who was insistent that their tech wiki pages reside in Sharepoint. I have been to places like that before and it sucks and this is why, in a nutshell:
Sharepoint wiki functionality sucks. Usability SUCKS. Its not fluid, it doesn’t support full wiki syntax, its HTML syntax is limited, and it hates images. And the biggest problem is usually Sharepoint is locked down on a site with security, which defeats the purpose of a wiki altogether which is trust and public knowledge maintained by everyone.
Use the Tool for the job, dammit.
Of course the story I got from her was how they couldn’t get enough content in there. The teams avoided it like the plague. So I told her my reasons why Sharepoint isn’t any good as a wiki. Its stupendous as a document repository; but many times sites distrust the developers and force them to use an inefficient tool, and then get upset because the tool won’t perform. It’s very simple: who is using the tool? Who is the audience? Then why in god’s name does a non-interested party get to pick the tool for these people?
Good Tools
There are so many good wiki engines out there I don’t even know where to start. Many are PHP based and will simply run on an Apache server. MediaWiki or PmWiki, I like the latter because it is lightweight, and even use it for the Ivy Street Project site. Sometimes, you might have a J2EE shop and your in house server is JBoss or Tomcat (neither of which need Apache) so, you want a J2EE solution. I’ve seen countless JSPWiki installations. Or, you can buy awesome wiki engines like Atlassian Confluence.
The point is: use the tool to fit the job. Sharepoint is not a good wiki, its only a good document repository. Good for versioning etc. all those BA docs and SLA’s and etc.
Formula
A workable wiki engine will have a very easy to use interface, support wiki syntax and perhaps HTML. Images aren’t a pain. It works on a lot of databases or none at all (PmWiki — flat files). The search engine works nice and the taxonomy should be easily adjustable.
What’s a wiki for? Well its NOT to store legacy information. It should contain the most up to date information about developer setup, environments, methodologies. Design. Today’s stuff. Everyone contributes and keeps it rolling; that’s what it’s for.
My friend listened to me and I am hopeful she sees what this is really all about.