[Mediawiki-l] What Wiki are we each working on?

[Frederik Dohr]

This is a great idea, so here's my story:

== Premise ==

I've introduced a wiki for a small corporate project team (~20 people), 
hoping to improve information flow, create a central information 
archive, and increase overall efficiency. (All desperately needed.)

== Initial Reception ==

The wiki is still in its very early stages, and reception so far has 
been rather tepid.

The main problem is getting people to use the wiki in the first place, 
as they seem to have no idea what to actually use it for. So as of now, 
I'm pretty much the only one actively using it.

I've made some efforts to improve this situation, but as an intern I'm 
hardly in the position to push for adoption or even to provide incentives.

== Sneaky Initiation ==

The team is in urgent need of a more-effective way to share documents 
(mostly Word, Excel and PowerPoint files). Now, before you cry out "wiki 
is not a document management system", rest assured that I'm well aware 
of that, so please bear with me.

The current method is to just dump the files somewhere on the central 
file server, either announcing their location via e-mail or simply 
hoping others will find them eventually. (There is supposed to a certain 
folder structure and versioning system, but few people seem to care 
about that.)
This results in frequent confusion about where to find the desired 
files. But there's also the question of which of those files is just a 
draft and which one's been agreed-upon by everyone involved.

This is where I currently see my chance to make people more aware of the 
wiki and its potential:
The project leader was delighted to hear that the wiki could be used for 
file storage - and even more so when I told him that old versions of a 
file could be retained, providing an automated versioning system. In 
addition, each file can be commented, discussed and categorized via the 
corresponding wiki page.
While this certainly falls short of the capabilities of a full-fledged 
DMS (e.g. access control, indexing uploaded documents for full-text 
search*, integrated workflow management etc.), it's definitely a lot 
better than what's currently being used.

* though that might change in the not-too-distant future; see the thread
   on "Storing or Linking Documents"

== Exposure ==

As a result of using the wiki as DMS, everyone on the team will be 
exposed to the wiki on a regular basis. By commenting the files being 
uploaded and discussing them in the wiki, they will also make their 
first baby steps in using wiki markup.
I will closely watch all changes to improve the file descriptions (e.g. 
by adding simple formatting, and maybe even links to other files or 
relevant wiki pages), thus "leading by example".

My hope is that people will gradually venture into other realms of the 
wiki and take a look at the actual wiki pages instead of just using the 
files area.
Ideally, many of the documents being uploaded could end up as wiki pages 
themselves; users might realize that it's much easier to edit the text 
in the wiki directly than downloading the file, modifying it and then 
uploading it again...

== Problems ==

The major problem I see at the moment is compatibility with existing 
tools - that is, word processors (MS Word or OOo Writer).

For one, it's not always easy to move existing documents into the wiki 
(despite tools like Word2MediaWikiPlus). This usually requires at least 
some manual adjustments and thus takes some effort.

Conversely, writing a long document (e.g. a manual) in the wiki pretty 
much demands the use of subpages to split up the contents. That, 
however, complicates exporting the wiki pages and combing them in a 
single document (DOC or PDF). (Not to mention the general issue of 
converting hypertext to linear documents.)
Also, I am not aware of any production-ready wiki2doc (or wiki2odf) 
converters that would enable us to fine-tune the layout in a word processor.

Also, I suspect that the lack of a GUI interface for editing might be a 
problem once people start actively using the wiki - but that remains to 
be seen.

== Closing Remarks ==

Despite my somewhat sneaky approach, I do not intend to force the wiki 
on anyone. Instead, I just want them to realize its potential.
If they then decide they're more comfortable with the existing tools, 
fair enough.
After all, having the wiki linger on that server doesn't cost us a dime 
(it had been set up anyway for another PHP application, and MW is free 
software).

Also, I've thought about using a different wiki engine (e.g. MoinMoin) 
to have an integrated GUI (WYSIWYG/M) editor and Acess Control Lists.
However, it's hard to resist MediaWiki's features as well as its active 
developer community (including extension developers). Also, it's ties to 
Wikipedia make it somewhat familiar even to many non-geeks, which might 
ease adoption.


In case you've actually made it as far as down here:
Apologies for the long posting - it just ended up being way more complex 
than I had originally intended...


-- F.