Wiki

From TechWriter Wiki

A wiki is a software appplication that allows users to create, edit and link web pages veru easily and very quickly (or at least with significantly less training than is required for most applications.

The strength of wikis lies in the ability for many users to edit documents from anywhere in the world, via a standard Web browser (no special software or plug-ins are required). Because of this, they are often used to create collaborative websites or documentation sets.

Wikis are most popular on the Internet (witness Wikipedia), although their use within corporate environments is growing. Wikis can be used as a viable alternative to LAN shares or other knowledge management applications, both for fostering collaboration during the design and development phase of projects, and also for housing a corporation's documentation set. In this latter capacity, a wiki can be used to allow users to contribute to their own documentation, which means that (1) the users are more likely to use the documentation, and (2) knowledge previously existing only in the desks or minds of individuals is being captured in a form and location accessible to all other users.

Wikis in a corporate environment

Many corporations are put off the use of wikis because they perceive their open nature as a lack of control. If anyone can edit a page, then this could rapidly descend into anarchy. However, there are two strong counter-arguments to this.

Firstly, wikis typically provide very good version control. Every previous version of every page is retained (and often at the sub-page (or section) level. Furthermore, functionality is provided to allow anyone to compare any two versions (most commonly the current and the previous versions), displaying these side-by-side on screen, with the changes highlighted. A previous version can always be reverted to, meaning that any undersirable change (or 'vandalism') can easily be removed. Wikis also provide the ability to list 'most recent changes' allowing administrators or editors to quickly see what has changed, and make corrections if necessary.

In addition, although any user can change any page, this is not necessarily anonymous. By default wikis will record the IP address of the user who made the change, but most also offer the capability to allow only 'registered' users (who are known, or who have provided a valid e-mail addresss) to make changes.

Building on this, most wikis allow the level of access granted to users (or user groups) to be tightly controlled. For example, it is common for only administrators to be able to delete documents. A wiki could be configured so that only certain levels of users can create documents, or so that specific users can only change specific categories of documents. The TechWriter Wiki, for example, has been configured so that unregistered users can only edit 'comments' pages, and cannot edit article pages directly. In this manner, wikis can actually provide a greater level of control than is provided by other 'preferred' corporate solutions, such as shared LAN drives.

What wikis do lack is any form of built-in workflow. Once a change is made to a document it is instantly available to all users. This can, however, be mitigated to some degree through stringent 'policing' of newly-created pages.