>> Well, we are talking about Perspective, not ScrewTurn (although I like its
approach) and we are talking about small to medium-size companies that want
Wikis for projects, document management, occasional "blogging" via personal
pages, a place to store policy and procedure manuals, but mostly about
projects. Not fancy WikiTalk or web page design - nobody really cares about
that, except techies.
First, I'm not a techie. FW completely looks geared towards techies and I
think that has to change. But once you change the design your perspective
might change. You don't need WikiTalk to do anything that you're describing.
You can do it all by hand like in the other wikis. You can completely cut out
WikiTalk. But if you did use WikiTalk it would make it much easier and
efficient.
>> And we are talking about ordinary people, not programmers, not IT people,
not developers, but sales guys, front reception folks, the CEO and VPs, the
HR department. IOW, real people with real needs - needs that are simple,
looking for a simple solution, easy to use - and therein lies the issue.
I'm a real person and I have put FW to use for real people too who are not
techies. The people who use it don't use WikiTalk. I do, though, and they
often don't even know it. So if you had someone who knew WikiTalk and cleaned
up pages it would make everyone else's job a lot easier.
>> FlexWiki doesn't come close to meeting those needs. Sorry... but that's a
fact. It has very little end-user simplicity. It's not intuitive - and
trying to even bold a sentence is cryptic and foreboding to users.
True, the nature of wiki markup is very cryptic. Perspective's WYSIWYG editor
might make things easier in the beginning. But in the long run a WYSIWYG
editor creates more complications. Wikimedia does not use a WYSIWYG editor and
they're the largest wiki on earth and most of the contributors are not techies.
But they did learn how to work with wikimarkup because in the long run it
makes the wiki more efficient and you meet your goals. It's a dilemma everyone
who has developed and worked with a wiki on has faced. Visit the first wiki
and read what he has to say about it. The link is on OneMinuteWiki. The
dilemma is the lesser of two evils. Be sure to do a long-term analysis.
>> A wiki is a forum for business that should enable both private and public
input (but within the company itself). The private part through projects,
public through the availability of manuals and documents, a bit of blogging,
but that's about it. Otherwise, I don't want my people futzing around with
wiki web pages. I want them to go to a well-indexed set of pages, do their
lookups, read the manuals, offer suggestions, then get the hell back to
work.
I agree. FlexWiki will not meet your needs there because you cannot do
document uploads nor attachments. But your belief that a well-indexed set of
pages will happen on its own is not going to happen without some major work in
the wiki. Someone has to do the categorization and think it out and clean up
mis-placed content no matter where you go. WikiTalk is supposed to make this
easier. If you had one or two people who knew wikitalk they could help
categorize more efficiently, I believe. Otherwise it has to be done all by
hand.
>> I want our sales guys to have private areas where they can set up projects
and store documents, and get at them easily and quickly. I don't want them
wasting time searching through pages - just go to an index, select the
project and open it up and contribute: status updates, current client
contacts and so on.
Remember that someone has to create that index. Again, FW is not a good
choice, though, because it doesn't store document attachments.
>> I want my lease manager to be able to set up various private leases and
attach documents to them, and let me see them when I want, from wherever I
want. I want to be able to simply add others to those projects, under my
authority, without having to go through all kinds of silly adminstrative
panels and crap.
You're going to have to learn how to add them one way or the other -- whether
it's from a drop-down menu or within the server.
>> And don't expect me to remember everyone's handles - I
haven't time for that. I need a pop up to pick from.
I agree with that. With FlexWiki you don't have to use handles, remember.
People can use their real name instead. Then you could have one of your
WikiTalk people be able to organize a page with all your members on it for you
to select.
>> "1000 pages"! Who would want or need 1000 pages and who would even care
about searching, except under rare circumstances?
>> Indexing is the key to lookup, not google-type searching. I don't want my
>> people spending their
valuable time doing a bunch of random searches. If they have a purpose, go
to the index, grab the topic, look it up and get on with it.
I used to believe indexing was the most important until I reviewed my logs and
discovered how much the search function was used. Even if you focus on
indexing (and you should, I do agree), someone is going to have to spend time
actually thinking about and physically doing the indexing. This is where I
think FW and WikiMedia outrule the others because it uses scripting to organize
based on tags and keywords whereas the others have category systems but they
are rudimentary and not very helpful. So, to be able to quickly look and grab
a topic, someone has to place it in the right place for them to do that. FW
will make it appear there automatically. FW simply doesn't have many good live
examples where people do this.
>> 99% of small businesses (under 100 employees with the sweet spot at 25-30)
aren't using wikis, but they should be.
Yes!
>> They don't use them because there's little there to offer them.
It's like the American dollar coin no one uses it because the note is much
easier. In the UK, they had to stop producing the pound note to force people
to use the pound coin. I think people prefer e-mail and don't feel like they
need to use a wiki.
>> It's always the same problem when programmers are turned loose without a
>> concept, guidance or vision. They program the damn solutions to death, to
>> the point where nobody wants them because they don't solve any problems.
Well, I think FW's vision is very good. It's no different than Wikimedia or
the others. The only difference with FW is that they've never had someone who
is familiar with usability and design tell them how to design a site that is
geared towards users. The underlying code is fine. If FW was redesigned and
had concise instructions on how to install and a robust support board, I think
it would reduce the perception that it is focused solely towards techies.
There are some awesome things that you can do with FW where the users don't
have to touch any WikiTalk. Or you can completely ignore WikiTalk and run it
just like the other wikis (except for the file upload and member system). But
if you want it to work best for your people you're going to have to have at
least one person who is familiar with FW manage it so that it is seamless for
the users. I don't know any wiki besides maybe jotwiki where people actively
contribute content. Most wikis that have a large readership have just a
handful that do all the editing and indexing.
Regards,
Astralis
_________________________________________________________________
More photos; more messages; more whatever – Get MORE with Windows Live™
Hotmail®. NOW with 5GB storage.
http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_mini_5G_0907
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/
_______________________________________________
Flexwiki-users mailing list
Flexwiki-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flexwiki-users
