We use etherpad for real-time note taking, as it is
better suited to
that than MediaWiki is. For most of the projects that I am a part of,
after the meeting we move the notes from etherpad to a wiki, usually
mediawiki.org. I don't believe any of us think etherpad is a good way
to keep documents for any period of time, since it is impossible to
find anything in it. I'm betting that almost everything not moved from
etherpad is never looked at again.
I think the correct solution here is to continue to move the documents
from etherpad to
mediawiki.org (or some other appropriate wiki), and
try to be more vigilant about doing so.