I have worked for two companies where wikis were used in a software development environment. Based on that experience, I haven't been favorably impressed. The tantalizing premise of "everyone can share their information with everyone else" can be seriously compromised by lack of content organization.
Unless someone takes on an organizational guidance/enforcement role, the wiki becomes nothing more than a dumping ground for information that no one can locate. Will White's "anarchipedia" label hits the nail on the head. I cringe when I hear the words, "Oh, you can get that on the wiki" during a team meeting. In my experience, the wikis were set up by the software engineering team, mostly as a "self-help" tool and without input from QA or Doc. The wiki "organization' is more along the lines of "we'll make it up as we go along," making it extremely difficult to locate pertinent information. However, with a bit of planning and shared input, the wiki format has lots of potential. My own observation is that in today's rapid application development environment, most development teams don't have the time or inclination to do this. Regards, Keith Arnett Senior Technical Writer webMethods, Inc.\ Fairfax VA -----Original Message----- Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:39:13 -0700 From: Whites <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: OT: Tech Writers & Wikis To: Diane Gaskill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Framers <[email protected]> For starters, to the guy at SFSU trying to learn how to write, take another run at that sentence: "I am writing a white paper for my class, and I'm searching for writers who use wikis." I've been asked before what I thought about wikis in a software documentation environment. I suspect that the only reason Anarchipedia works at all is because there exists a large population of educated types who are willing to contribute and who are able to do so because they are writing their entries on someone else's nickel. Probably university souls who would otherwise be preparing lectures or grading some of the few papers that students still claim to write. Or maybe they are just avoiding their tedious chores. I'm dubious that folks in most development environments have the leisure to dawdle around in a wiki when they have their own workloads to get through. Or am I misunderstanding the charm of a wiki? It sounds like a mechanism to convince other people to do my work. will white On Mar 18, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Diane Gaskill wrote: > I am writing a white paper for my class, and I'm searching for writers > that use wikis. *************************************** _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
