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This is an old revision of WillyPs made by WillyPs on 2008-02-17 18:38:25.

 

WillyPs


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Neither the Wiki nor the blog are very conducive to two way conversation. In the wiki anyone can present ideas, and anyone can respond, but the conversation is broken by the lack of a time construct. That is, conversation can be presented on the page in any time order. There is, of course, a comments section for each page which counters this somewhat. The blog, on the other hand is a single sided discussion by nature. Again, comments are added. In both cases, the comments are generally presented as more of an afterthought, it is clear the user is commenting, rather than participating.

Another popular collaborative software is, of course, the forum. The forum is all about conversation. It does however, lose to the wiki in the presentation of information materials. This is because the multiple contributions often get lost in the many pages of responses to the original poster, if the original poster does not alter the original post to reflect the knowledge gained during the discussion. How often do we visit a forum with a question, find the perfect topic title, only to find 25 pages of semi-off topic chatter, with the answer in a few posts buried in the middle somewhere? This, and the fact that the topic may have receded a few pages, leads to the same questions being answered over and over, the few who know the answer becoming weary of answering the same questions. But, without encouraging discussion and soliciting feedback from a variety of users, we might never have found an answer. So, the forum is necessary, but not well suited for the purpose of, say, documenting a software product for the purpose of user support, or building a comprehensive guide to a game.

A blog is very time oriented, it almost forces a user to view the most recent post first. The forum is also time focused, but allows the viewer to choose category and topic. A wiki focuses on the viewer's freedom to choose the category and loses the time-linearity ability. What would a combination do? A mash-up of wiki and blog has been suggested, and might be a good solution for some applications, but personally I don't see it. What, really are we adding to wiki with this? The ability to categorize and filter by time?

I believe a better match would be a wiki and a forum. I envision a forum where a wiki page would head every topic, and could be modified to reflect the final output of the discussion. One or multiple threads could follow, also with the option of additional wiki pages. Each post would have the option of being included in the wiki page. The final wiki pages could then be presented with or without the forum attached, depending on the needs of the user, and of course the degree of wiki page completion.

As an example, suppose someone wanted an answer to: 'How do I install a widget in XYZ software?'. If the developer of the software anticipated the question, and deemed it important, it would not matter much what script powered the website, the answer could be a few clicks away. Unanticipated or less than important questions (in the eyes of the devs) will be harder to find, and the scripting becomes much more critical. In the Open Source community, in particular, questions with unknown answers becomes the most challenging to the scripting used, as the devs may need to pull from other user's experiences to answer the question. And since the dev's should not be forced to answer the same questions repeatedly, it's also a critical mission of the script to enable users to find the information they need, without having to ask repetitive questions.

  1. Wiki provides page organization.
  1. Wiki provides page categorizing.
  1. Wiki provides easy page creation.
  1. Wiki provides pages that are easy to edit.
  1. Forum provides topic organization.
  1. Forum provides topic creation.
  1. Forum provides topic organization by time.
  1. Forum provides community involvement.

So, to get the answer to the question, a user might look at wiki pages on various topics, and not find a clear answer. He would the go to the forum, and post a new topic. Momentarily confused by the option to create a wiki page, he would likely ignore it and continue to post his question. A more knowledgeable user would see the post and reply, clicking the box, 'Create wiki page: (wiki page name) from this topic'. When he has added his reply, it is added to a new wiki page, under the content of the original poster's first post. Future poster would have the option, 'Add this reply to wiki page: (wiki page name)?'. When the solution is found, it is an easy task to clean-up, format and organize the final wiki page. Probably change the name of the topic, too, as the original poster likely named it 'total noobz nedz help pleez' or something like that. Ahrrg! But, that's a topic for another rant!

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I have a website that has a wiki and a forum. I am going to merge them. The wiki had problems with spam, due to the unmoderated registration. As a result, I locked all the pages from editing, to all except the few legitimate contributers. So, the first part of the merger will be to modify the wiki to use the forum's registration. I'll also merge the static portion of the site, restyling all three to a single theme. The forum has user selectable themes, it would be nice to carry this across the integrated site, but that would not be a high priority. The next step would be a further merge of the wiki into the forum and the forum into the wiki. That is, visitors will be able to find pages using the wiki category navigation system, and the option of viewing the forum discussions that are involved in the page as part of the wiki. Whereas on the other hand, participants of the forum will be able to take part in the editing of the wiki page, which will appear as part of the forum thread.

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