[Evolution] About Wikis (was: Evolution-mail not showing)

["Anton J Aylward, CISSP" <aja si on ca>]

The original Wiki is the Portland Pattern Repository at http://c2.com/ppr
It has calved off many discussion on religion and philosophy, but the
core still addresses programming patterns and antipatterns.
(I'd strongly recommend the books in that series.  If you don't
recognise at least one of the dysfunctional antipatterns where you're
working you have something to boast about!)

Wikis are a wonderful project management tool because they can
do things you simply can't with conventional configuration control
and design tools, you can document WHY design decisions were made
and the record the discussion that surrounded those decisions.

Its a lot lot more than just 'documentation'!

Speaking as a project manager and a maintenance programmer
of old (about 25 years), its one this to have documentation
(even if it is better than most of what I see in Open Source)
its another to know WHY things are the way they are.  Design
decisions are usually very locally dependant and these local
conditions can change dramatically - see for example the interview
with David Korn at http://slashdot.org/articles/01/02/06/2030205.shtml.

Zope has a library module for implementing Wikis.
http://joyful.com/zwiki/ZWiki

Sourceforge has a PHP Wiki
http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/

See for example:
http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?StartingPoints
http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?DocumentationFromFrequentlyAskedQuestions
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiNature
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?QualityWithoutaName


Another Wiki is Meatball at
http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?StartingPoints

Another is Use Cases at http://www.usecases.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl

You might be interested in
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MozillaMustDie

Note that the Wiki also lets you jump to recent changes, most popular
pages, and can be set to trace authorship, as well have various
security restrictions and moderation.  There are a variety of grouping
and indexing and classification options and search tools available.

There are now quite a number of different implementations of Wiki with
a variety of customisation and visual enhancements.  One 'variety' is
the Twiki (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FreeTwiky) which introduces the idea
of voting on topics.  You might see how that is relevant in an Open
Source
project to discuss adding features.

What's behind a Wiki?  Its just a web server, usually Apache, and some
nifty code.  Ward Cunningham wrote the original - which is the PPR -
and its all in his book at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020171499X/qid=994992171/sr=2-1/re
f=aps_sr_b_1_1/102-4723666-6217742  This realy isn't rocket science.


I honestly can't imagine running a project without a Wiki any more
that trying to run a development project without make.  Sadly, all
project wikis I know are internal to organisations so I can't point
you to one. (If anyone knows of a public project management wiki
please let me know.)  Having a Wiki for an open source project
would be a great demonstration!

Anton J Aylward
--
"Remember your physics, Doctor. A black body is the most efficient
radiator
of energy."
-Ian Malcolm, ("Jurassic Park", the book, not the movie)



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Kemp [mailto:kempa kwic com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2001 6:00 PM
> To: notzed ximian com
> Cc: aja si on ca; evolution ximian com
> Subject: Re: [Evolution] RE: Evolution-mail not showing
>
> I wiki is an online collaborative documentation thingie...
>
> LiVid has one for example, but their site is down right now...
>
> On 13 Jul 2001 11:08:19 +0930, Not Zed wrote:
> > What's a wiki?