Tim Appnel clarifies what he meant yesterday:
What I meant to say (and did rather poorly I suppose) is that a wiki does not sufficiently facilitate discussion over time or communicate reason for the change nor does it alert me to the change which may change the context of the collaboration elsewhere. I have to really dig for it. (Perhaps this is just my experience with MoinMoin the wiki Sam Ruby is using.)
Part of this social process, not technology.
Several classic wiki pages on techniques for effective wiki-based conversation:
* How to Converse Deeply on a Wiki
* How to use Thread Mode in a Wiki
* Soft Security
It seems to me that some of the small confusions can be cleared up (and are being cleared up) with these types of techniques. For example, a person who disagrees with a sentence shouldn’t change the meaning of that sentence, but should add a signed comment. When discussion converges, create a new document in Document Mode, not Thread Mode.
I agree with you that it’s good to use wiki with other communications tools. In a membership group, it works nicely to have the back-and-forth conversation in email. In this case, the community is open and ad hoc, so the public modes (wiki and weblog) are a good fit.
Completely agreed that email notification would be useful. I don’t know if MoinMoin has that feature or not.
In a Use Mod wiki, you can track changes easily. In the RecentChanges part of the wiki, you have access to see what other revisions were made, and what the difference between any revision, easily.
I think when I started to use wiki 1.5 years ago, I wanted to have email notification of page change, but in an active wiki, that is overload. I have just learned to go to earlier revisions to see the discussion.
I think it depends on one’s level of attention, engagement in the community, and personal preference.
I check the Socialtext intranet wiki “Recent Changes” compulsively.
There are other wikis that I don’t want to go out an check, but want to know if there’s something new.
In Sam’s wiki (a MoinMoin), RSS is available on the RecentChanges page. It’s crashing right now, I’m letting Sam know.
I agree an RSS feed is a better way to go, Wakka wiki had RSS for every page, so you could tag a specific page/idea.
sonnerie mobile
More on wiki patterns of use
More on wiki patterns of use .