What we did was implement the multiple starting page hack. That is, when
the
user inputs a new article title and the article does not exist, the user
is
given a choice of about 10 different types of new articles to create (e.g
customer, hardware, application, troubleshooting, etc.). When the use
clicking on the link the start page is a template with a set of default
sections that are required for the give article type. There is also a
"page
info" section at the bottom, which includes things like creation date,
creator, review date and so forth. We also have comments in the templates
to
explain things to the user.
Also each of these article types have categories automatically included in
the
templates. When the article is created, the categories are added.
The details of the hack are here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multiple_starting_text_hack
There is also a list specifically for using the MediaWikie as a knowledge
base:
http://groups.google.com/group/mediawiki-as-knowledgebase
That's an interesting way to handle creating preformatted documents. I will
look into that.
What I did on my test server was install the inputbox extension and have it
preload placeholder text and markup into the edit page. Then I added several
inputboxes to the search results page.