http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Wikis A listing of the most recently indexed works about Wikis in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Wikis http://tc.eserver.org/35841.html http://tc.eserver.org/35841.html Is it possible to use a wiki for technical documentation? Yes, most definitely. I started working on a wiki two years ago, with no prior experience of wikis (apart from the occasional encounter with Wikipedia) but with plentiful experience of technical writing. I’ve learned a lot and I’d like to pass on some tips to you too. http://tc.eserver.org/35842.html http://tc.eserver.org/35842.html Rating sites empower people to make better choices. Obviously they are subject to abuse (either from the competition, from the the slandered source, or from biased friends). But even in the possible exaggerations from the participants, the ratings raise awareness of issues that you might otherwise not carefully examine. http://tc.eserver.org/35826.html http://tc.eserver.org/35826.html Wikis are a great way to create and publish documentation online, but there are many wikis that haven’t worked. They comprise just a few pages of incomplete, out of date information. Why is that? Why do some wikis work and others just fail? Here are six key reasons. http://tc.eserver.org/35752.html http://tc.eserver.org/35752.html The wiki crops up in many companies' internal discussions about process improvements and efficient collaboration, but it is often shot down because so few people have exposure to good models of what a really successful business wiki can do. Ars is here to help with a practical introduction based on real-world examples. http://tc.eserver.org/35670.html http://tc.eserver.org/35670.html Let’s say that you’re reading a news story about a particular area of geographic conflict and you decide to investigate further. Without an encyclopedia available, as fewer and fewer of us seem to have them on hand these days, you quickly check out your handy online references. To your surprise, the article on this disputed feature seems to be an amalgamation of strongly differing opinions and ideologies, to the point where the article has been locked down from further editing. Such is the nature of the brave new world of user-generated content, where a content publisher forges a careful alliance of sorts with a wide range of contributors across very diverse locales and cultures. Depending on the intended purpose of the provided content, the end result can take on a life of its own, as it becomes the focal point for a silent yet fervent battle over “fact” and “truth” from divergent viewpoints. http://tc.eserver.org/35525.html http://tc.eserver.org/35525.html I’ve been collecting examples of wildly inconsistent writing lately. I’m not sure why these have stuck out to me, but when I think of book sprints and community writing events, consistency is an important, though sometimes difficult, goal and outcome. http://tc.eserver.org/35490.html http://tc.eserver.org/35490.html The concept of having control over your help content, to update it at any time, is what I’m calling content independence. Establishing content independence in your publishing environment may be a battle that can take years. For example, at a previous job, it took five years to finally convince architecture that we needed and deserved our own independent folder on a production server. In my current situation, I’ve pursued publishing routes in infrastructure that would enable on-the-fly updating, but for two years in a row I’ve come up empty-handed. With wikis, I think I’ve finally found the holy grail of content independence. http://tc.eserver.org/35438.html http://tc.eserver.org/35438.html Recently I’ve been working on a simple calendar project that uses a wiki for documentation. Although I’ve heard a lot about using wikis for documentation, and have even used them in the past, I ran into a few surprises this time. http://tc.eserver.org/35403.html http://tc.eserver.org/35403.html A wiki can be a Frequently Asked Questions repository, much like the knowledge bases in their heyday in the late 80s. My favorite line from the blog entry has to be its closer: 'It's about a different way of thinking around how to interact with the community.' And that is what I have explored with my wiki presentation, about how to build community with a wiki and be an active member of that community. But what are other uses of the wiki? http://tc.eserver.org/35300.html http://tc.eserver.org/35300.html There’s a place for a lighter touch in much of the online documentation we write. It’s a delicate balance. On the one hand, it’s important that the writing style does not annoy or offend the reader and does not detract from the content. We also need to be aware of people whose first language is not the one we’re writing in. On the other hand, the occasional touch of humour or personality can focus the reader’s attention onto the page. http://tc.eserver.org/35293.html http://tc.eserver.org/35293.html Depending on who you ask, HTML 5 is either the next important step toward creating a more semantic web or a disaster that's going to trap the web in yet another set of incomplete tags and markup soup. The problem with both sides of the argument is that very few sites are using HTML 5 in the wild, so the theoretical solutions to its perceived problems remain largely untested. http://tc.eserver.org/35287.html http://tc.eserver.org/35287.html Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had the chance to experiment with WebWorks ePublisher, a set of tools that converts documents from Word, FrameMaker and DITA XML to a number of different output formats. One of those output formats is Confluence wiki. It’s been very interesting, so I thought I’d blog about it and see if anyone else wants to give it a go as well. http://tc.eserver.org/35270.html http://tc.eserver.org/35270.html Social technology has risen to meet this challenge over the last few years. And while there are a lot of social tools to choose from, one type stands out for this type of collaboration: the wiki. The unique communication model inherent in the wiki makes it ideal for becoming a central business tool for your entire team. The following is an overview of using wiki software for small business. http://tc.eserver.org/35154.html http://tc.eserver.org/35154.html As wikis mature, we’re using them for more complex business cases such as technical documentation, business analysis and project management. It’s becoming more and more interesting, if not essential, for wikis to support the import and export of content to and from other formats. Most wikis allow you to convert their pages at least to PDF and HTML. But what of other formats, and what about tools for getting content into wikis as well as out of them? http://tc.eserver.org/35124.html http://tc.eserver.org/35124.html In this post, technical writer Milan Davidovic that contributing to wikis can help novices build skills and a portfolio. And he offers a simple roadmap for doing that effectively. http://tc.eserver.org/35108.html http://tc.eserver.org/35108.html The notes for a presentation (titled Thinking Outside the Book: Wikis for Writing and Delivering Documentation, that discusses the whys, the tools, and the techniques of using wikis for documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/35087.html http://tc.eserver.org/35087.html While the content of what I write at work is not all that interesting, and even the paradoxes or other conundrums about technical writing sometimes dull, I really get excited about the technology side of my job. New technologies are emerging each day at a rapid rate. It’s like we’re living in the internet era before the dot.com burst. This is a Web 2.0 land, where even Google threatens to become the next operating system. I am really eager to use a wiki to write my next set of documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/35025.html http://tc.eserver.org/35025.html In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life. The program uses the same software behind the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and could potentially lead to hundreds of Army guides being “wikified.” The goal, say the officers behind the effort, is to tap more experience and advice from battle-tested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army’s array of colleges and research centers who have traditionally written the manuals. http://tc.eserver.org/34779.html http://tc.eserver.org/34779.html In early March we opened up the Atlassian documentation to the wider community. We added a CC-by (Creative Commons Attribution) license to our product documentation. We invited people to contribute to our documentation after signing an Atlassian Contributor License Agreement (ACLA). At that stage, the ACLA was just starting its three-month trial. The trial period has now ended, and we're delighted to say: it's a go! http://tc.eserver.org/34751.html http://tc.eserver.org/34751.html As Agile gains momentum as a development approach of choice, documenting design becomes a challenge. Peter Gremett shows how using a wiki to capture your design is a great way to be adaptive as you build and deliver product to customers. http://tc.eserver.org/34752.html http://tc.eserver.org/34752.html Like many companies, CorVu has extensive knowledge of its own products and a desire to make that knowledge available to customers. A major block to achieving that desire has been a lack of people with the time to either record the internal knowledge or to fashion the knowledge into a customer-ready format. We needed to spread the load so that a broad range of developers, tech writers, professional service consultants and others could all contribute what time and knowledge they had to a shared goal. Our hope was that a process built around several Wiki sites would facilitate this collaborative approach. http://tc.eserver.org/34695.html http://tc.eserver.org/34695.html In the absence of safety concerns, I think that accuracy must win. Thus, as the information curator, you have a responsibility to correct inaccurate information. If the inaccuracy is truly dangerous, you may need to edit the post directly. Make sure that you disclosure what you've done with brackets. http://tc.eserver.org/34660.html http://tc.eserver.org/34660.html Are there algorithmic ways of determining the health of a Wiki? There are likely a number of different patterns of healthy Wikis and, more importantly, healthy Wiki-based communities. If we can identify and visualize these patterns, we can apply these analytics to: understand the patterns of interactions in a healthy community; aid the community to use the Wiki more effectively; and encourage developers to facilitate these patterns in the tool itself. http://tc.eserver.org/34583.html http://tc.eserver.org/34583.html Today, content professionals are tugged in multiple directions, expected to multi-task their way through an increasing amount of work with the help of software tools designed to make them more productive. This survey aims to explore how you and your co-workers utilize software tools and determine, in various scenarios, whether they are actually a help or a hindrance. http://tc.eserver.org/34576.html http://tc.eserver.org/34576.html There are two camps in technical documentation. There’s the “quick web” folks who connect easily and author easily, and then there’s the “structured quality” camp that requires more thoughtful testing and time spent on task analysis and information architecture. http://tc.eserver.org/34572.html http://tc.eserver.org/34572.html Wikis aren’t just tools for techies. They're also also for writers. In this article, one writer describes how he uses a wiki for his work. http://tc.eserver.org/34549.html http://tc.eserver.org/34549.html A question that technical communicators frequently ask about wikis is "How do I get the documentation out of a wiki?" A simple answer: "Don’t worry about it." Because the wiki is the delivery method. http://tc.eserver.org/34492.html http://tc.eserver.org/34492.html If you need the collaborative aspects of a Wiki combined with DITA's modular topics and publishing capabilities, then DAISY might just be the system you need--and it's free. DAISY provides WYSIWYG editing for Wiki pages that can be combined to publish books, either in a PDF or as a single HTML page. http://tc.eserver.org/34417.html http://tc.eserver.org/34417.html While the effort to provide more interactivity and power to the end-user seems to suggest that we open up a wiki to allow them to add and edit content, the basic idea of a set of edited documentation is now challenged with a social network of participating customers, all of whom may now edit, add, and delete content. How social can you go? This article is an attempt to look at the process of evaluating the use of a wiki for end-user documentation, if such a thing can exist. Are the two types of customer content — wikis and end-user documentation — mutually exclusive? http://tc.eserver.org/34399.html http://tc.eserver.org/34399.html There are a wide variety of uses for Wikis and a level of interest in using them that’s matched by an extensive range of Wiki software. Wikis introduce to the Internet a collaborative model that not only allows, but explicitly encourages, broad and open participation. The idea that anyone can contribute reflects an assumption that both content quantity and quality will arise out of the ‘wisdom of the crowd.’ http://tc.eserver.org/34384.html http://tc.eserver.org/34384.html Although wikis have gained substantially in popularity since they first appeared some ten years ago, many enterprises still begin their wiki projects with unrealistic expectations. http://tc.eserver.org/33884.html http://tc.eserver.org/33884.html The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of the Web-based collaborative authoring environment commonly referred to as wikis, and examine how they can be used in a corporate publishing environment. The paper also includes suggested techniques for transferring existing content from native authoring tools into a wiki format for online delivery. http://tc.eserver.org/33731.html http://tc.eserver.org/33731.html DITA is natural. Do XML/DITA conversion research now. Wiki is especially good for iterative writing. Structured wiki authoring in coming. http://tc.eserver.org/33733.html http://tc.eserver.org/33733.html What are your thoughts on whether wikis could be used for end-user technical documentation? I'd imagine that a more structured wiki based on DITA content (which may have already been created for end-users) might work well for technical documentation. Have you seen any good examples? I'd love to see a well-done example. http://tc.eserver.org/33738.html http://tc.eserver.org/33738.html The process of creating and maintaining product documentation is, like most other business processes, under pressure to reduce costs, reduce cycle times, and support companies as they compete on a more global scale; in general, the need to do more with less. How are companies to address these conflicting needs? The purpose of this white paper is to identify specific processes that can be enhanced to yield meaningful efficiencies and several strategies for attaining such improvements. http://tc.eserver.org/33694.html http://tc.eserver.org/33694.html I have been playing around with Crucible, Atlassian’s peer code review tool. The latest version of Crucible allows you to review Confluence wiki pages. This is a new feature, so I decided to try it out. Also, I was wondering why you might want to use an independent tool to review a wiki page, when you could instead just add comments to the page or update the page directly. http://tc.eserver.org/33688.html http://tc.eserver.org/33688.html Much documentation and training is delivered in one direction—the writer provides content, and the user consumes it. Perhaps this is one reason that technical communicators are looking for ways to create a conversation. It’s easier to address user problems when you can ask follow-up questions and get details. In a one-way delivery, you have to hope that what you provide will cover what’s needed. In a conversation, you can constantly get more information and react accordingly. Still, in an instant message, chat, or forum conversation, it can be hard to be clear. http://tc.eserver.org/33644.html http://tc.eserver.org/33644.html Learn how to use a wiki as an organizational tool within your company. http://tc.eserver.org/33645.html http://tc.eserver.org/33645.html The founder of FLOSS manuals discusses the intersection of books and Web 2.0 and the continuing evolution of publishing and technology. http://tc.eserver.org/33635.html http://tc.eserver.org/33635.html Many people have predicted that wikis will replace traditional help in the future. Ok, I can buy that. But I've also heard that technical writers will surrender content control to SMEs and users, and will move into other roles such as merely editing wiki content, or switching to programming, training. Sorry. I just can't see that happening. In the world of wikis, technical writers will still be kings of content. http://tc.eserver.org/33321.html http://tc.eserver.org/33321.html One writer's experiences and thoughts about moving content from Microsoft Word to a wiki. http://tc.eserver.org/32896.html http://tc.eserver.org/32896.html The intention of this article is to open the readers eyes to the issues with trusting user edited content. Over time, the Wikipedia may balance out. Eventually, or possibly even now, user tests are being performed to see how much content is credible. Also, the academic communities could step up and decide unanimously that the Wikipedia is not a trusted body of information to use for research. Once this happens the Wikipedia will have to change the way information within their pages is handled to maintain existence. http://tc.eserver.org/32816.html http://tc.eserver.org/32816.html Learn about theoretical and practical examples of merging DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture), a structured authoring methodology, and wiki’s freeform authoring and editing capabilities. http://tc.eserver.org/32817.html http://tc.eserver.org/32817.html So how did the wiki become a seemingly permanent fixture in the landscape of today’s Web? Which wikis have succeeded as technical documentation, and how can we replicate their success? http://tc.eserver.org/32774.html http://tc.eserver.org/32774.html It may seem counter-intuitive, but we believe technical authors shouldn't fear the trend towards user generated content. http://tc.eserver.org/32775.html http://tc.eserver.org/32775.html Intuit’s cofounder challenges traditional companies to follow the lead of internet superstars—and of innovative peers such as Honda, Procter and Gamble, and Hyatt—in tapping the contributions of countless people beyond their organizations. http://tc.eserver.org/32714.html http://tc.eserver.org/32714.html The net effect of social networking is the increasing availability of fine-grained information about locales. This information is both interesting and valuable. It is sought after by people living in these places and by advertisers who are trying to reach these people. A handful of startups are recognizing the big potential of local information - relevance. In this post we look at different aspects of the hyperlocality, from satellites to local blogs, and ponder how this information will be organized and monetized. http://tc.eserver.org/32666.html http://tc.eserver.org/32666.html A directory of publications, tools, and organizations that can help you become a better technical communicator. This section is ever growing, with new Resources being added by Indiana Chapter members and by this site’s visitors all the time. Anyone can add a resource they think might be valuable to the Indiana technical communication community. http://tc.eserver.org/32353.html http://tc.eserver.org/32353.html Flossmanuals.net is a new wiki help authoring/publishing tool hybrid that, as far as I know, is completely unique. The site is more than a wiki. It allows groups of authors to create specific chapters independently. You can then remix the chapters into any arrangement and selection you want through a drag-and-drop interface. http://tc.eserver.org/31882.html http://tc.eserver.org/31882.html Despite all the excitement in the technical communications community over Web 2.0 technologies like wikis and blogs, it looks like companies are still reluctant to tie the knot for a variety of reasons. http://tc.eserver.org/31885.html http://tc.eserver.org/31885.html An overview of how one technical communicator moved a Word document to a wiki, and some of the issues involved. http://tc.eserver.org/31841.html http://tc.eserver.org/31841.html Provides a recap of how the online, wiki-based Carolina Communique evolved and won an Award of Excellence in the Newsletters: Web & Online category of the 2008 APEX Awards for Publication Excellence http://tc.eserver.org/31568.html http://tc.eserver.org/31568.html An interview done by Scott Nesbitt of DMN Communications. Nesbitt talks with Stewart Mader, author of the book WikiPatterns. In the interview, Nesbitt and Mader discuss adopting wikis, how best to use them in an organization, building communities around wikis, and why Mader is so passionate about wikis. http://tc.eserver.org/31517.html http://tc.eserver.org/31517.html A wiki is a web site that anybody can change. You may have already visited a wiki without even knowing it. Wikis are poised to become one of the most important online communication tools we’ve seen in a long time. While blogs are justifiably getting most of the attention paid to the online world these days, wikis are quietly weaving their way into both the external and internal communication world. http://tc.eserver.org/31489.html http://tc.eserver.org/31489.html In this podcast, Stewart talks about the following: the advantages of using a wiki for your technical documentation; why lack of advanced styles in wikis isn’t a major problem; the relentless focus on simplicity with wikis; choosing the right wiki among dozens of wiki engines. http://tc.eserver.org/31446.html http://tc.eserver.org/31446.html For the last couple of months, I’ve been developing an online list of major trends that are transforming public relations, with links to sites, articles and quotes that in one way or another prove the point and that I know I’ll someday want to get back to. It’s something like my own personal tagging system, maintained in a wiki. http://tc.eserver.org/31394.html http://tc.eserver.org/31394.html If you're a professional communicator, chances are good you've already asked yourself whether it's time to start your own blog. But there's another tech question that you probably have not yet asked yourself, and perhaps you should: Is it time to start your own wiki? http://tc.eserver.org/31185.html http://tc.eserver.org/31185.html For all the hand-wringing over whether Wikipedia is a legitimate source for completing college assignments, some professors are quietly incorporating it into their classrooms and even their research. Others, noting features of the Web site that contribute to inaccuracies and shortchange the value of expertise, are building variations on the model that are more amenable to academics and to peer review. http://tc.eserver.org/31186.html http://tc.eserver.org/31186.html Admit it: You sometimes consult Wikipedia. Scott McLemee wonders if you should write for it, too. http://tc.eserver.org/31117.html http://tc.eserver.org/31117.html The fact that a Workplace could be considered 'quick' is not properly linked with the easiness to find information or with the speedy level of the communications: in this context it is linked to the Wiki feature of assuring a real-time updating access to contents and resources (data, information or knowledge and physical resources). http://tc.eserver.org/31119.html http://tc.eserver.org/31119.html The true collaboration occurs when people have the possibility to co-work on the same sub-task, activating a mechanism of new knowledge creation. Collaboration is not so obvious if is not clearly supported: the risk is to exchange this 'together' learning process with a simple cooperation process, producing not new knowledge but only a simple addition of individual regress knowledge. http://tc.eserver.org/31118.html http://tc.eserver.org/31118.html A flexible workplace is characterized by the capability of individuals to manage not only their work, time or resources, but also the possibility to influence and operate in an active way inside the community (from team to organizational level) and for these reasons to be part of the operational process. http://tc.eserver.org/31122.html http://tc.eserver.org/31122.html Strictly linked with transparency concept, openness is at the base of the principle that people work better if they have access to the right information and possibility to assume that all over the organization. The simple access to other group member data or the possibility to know activities scheduled also in other groups are normal operations in a mature context such as is allowed to look to other team solutions or results in order to decide something for the own team. http://tc.eserver.org/31121.html http://tc.eserver.org/31121.html A common element between Wiki philosophy and innovation successful case histories, is the partial or total absence of structure or, saying better, of hierarchy. The possibility, in fact, to contribute in the same way, indifferently at which level you are involved in the organization, is one of the first steps towards the reduction of barriers to collaboration, participation and involvement in the organizational life. http://tc.eserver.org/31120.html http://tc.eserver.org/31120.html The possibility of sharing improves an effective distribution of common resources (meeting room, projector, corporate car...). In a more general acceptation of the term, the availability to ideas or previous solutions useful for different use is an advantage that make co-creation of new knowledge and a healthy circulation of knowledge possible. http://tc.eserver.org/31107.html http://tc.eserver.org/31107.html The dynamic nature of wikis can cause a few headaches when you need to baseline documentation that's on a wiki to correspond with the release of your product. This blog post looks at some ways in which you can try baselining wiki content. http://tc.eserver.org/31114.html http://tc.eserver.org/31114.html A lightweight markup language uses syntax that is similar to wiki syntax -- keyboard characters are used to define formatting. This blog post argues that if your documentation needs are simple, and you have a low or non-existent budget, then a lightweight markup language might be worth investigating. http://tc.eserver.org/31109.html http://tc.eserver.org/31109.html User-generated documentation is a big issue in technical communication circles. If properly done, tapping into the knowledge of users can improve the quality and breadth of your documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/31047.html http://tc.eserver.org/31047.html This study examines the revision histories of 10 Wikipedia articles nominated for the site's Featured Article Class (FAC), its highest quality rating, 5 of which achieved FAC and 5 of which did not. The revisions to each article were coded, and the coding results were combined with a descriptive analysis of two representative articles in order to determine revision patterns. All articles in both groups showed a higher percentage of additions of new material compared to deletions and revisions that rearranged the text. Although the FAC articles had roughly equal numbers of content and surface revisions, the non-FAC articles had fewer surface revisions and were dominated by content revisions. Although the unique features of the Wikipedia environment inhibit strict comparisons between these results and those of earlier revision studies, these results suggest revision in this environment places unique structural demands on writers, possibly leading to unique revision patterns. http://tc.eserver.org/30550.html http://tc.eserver.org/30550.html Catalyze is a member-driven community for all professionals involved in defining business systems, designing software applications and creating websites. If you are a business analyst, usability professional, UI designer, information architect, interaction designer, product manager, project manager or anyone else involved in the definition process of software applications, this community is for you and will be worth your time. http://tc.eserver.org/29795.html http://tc.eserver.org/29795.html The era of desktop publishing is over, and I must bid Microsoft Word and several other desktop applications good-bye. In case you think I'm singling out Microsoft, it's not just MS Word, but also OpenOffice, GoogleOffice, or any application that makes what we used to call 'documents'. Nowadays, I'm simply using a wiki for collaborative information sharing and a blog for online reporting. http://tc.eserver.org/29707.html http://tc.eserver.org/29707.html Wikis allow distributed teams to collaboratively write and edit documents through the Internet in a shared online workspace, without the need for special HTML knowledge or tools. The flexibility of wiki technology is a boon for increased cooperative work on large team projects. However, wiki technology also complicates notions of usable design as the information architecture of a wiki site may be created on the fly by all participants rather than by a dedicated technical communicator. This paper describes the basic technology of wikis, some advantages and disadvantages, and areas of concern with regard to information design. http://tc.eserver.org/29575.html http://tc.eserver.org/29575.html This paper examines user-generated metadata as implemented and applied in two web services designed to share and organize digital media to better understand grassroots classification. http://tc.eserver.org/29565.html http://tc.eserver.org/29565.html Academic writers are used to having their ideas encapsulated and enshrined in printed text (e.g., a journal article or a book), but publishing them in a wiki strips them of this protection. What happens when strangers change our writing? Since the traditional academic publishing paradigm has not caught up with the open-editing, peer-to-peer model, are we equipped to deal with the paradigm shift that wikis represent? These are issues we consider in this short piece. http://tc.eserver.org/29555.html http://tc.eserver.org/29555.html An ongoing tension within Wikipedia is characterized as the inclusionists versus the exclusionists. The inclusionists argue that one of Wikipedia's core values is that it should be open to all ideas, that truth emerges from a variety of directions. Better to include than exclude. The exclusionists see Wikipedia's utilitarianism diminished if too much froth clouds the valuable information inside. These people delete material they consider inappropriate. The case offers students a chance to understand issues such as how online cultures are made and maintained, the power of self-policing organizations, the question of whether the service is drifting from its core principles, and whether a Wikipedia-like concept can work in a business setting. http://tc.eserver.org/29554.html http://tc.eserver.org/29554.html If we can solicit user participation in a Web 2.0 knowledge community (a volunter wiki documentation, for example), we might have a powerful means for creating high quality content. But how should this process work? http://tc.eserver.org/29544.html http://tc.eserver.org/29544.html Wiki is a category of web server software that allows users to contribute content. Collaboration is the key to Wiki, which is designed as a powerful system for online communities to build web pages and web sites. Unlike blogs and forums, all users are allowed to contribute and edit existing content. Wiki is derived from the Hawaiian term "wiki wiki" meaning "quick". The concept behind a Wiki is that collaboration on projects will move it along quicker. http://tc.eserver.org/29197.html http://tc.eserver.org/29197.html While the effort to provide more interactivity and power to the end-user seems to suggest that we open up a wiki to allow them to add and edit content, the basic idea of a set of edited documentation is now challenged with a social network of participating customers, all of whom may now edit, add, and delete content. How social can you go? This article is an attempt to look at the process of evaluating the use of a wiki for end-user documentation, if such a thing can exist. Are the two types of customer content--wikis and end-user documentation--mutually exclusive? http://tc.eserver.org/28320.html http://tc.eserver.org/28320.html Wikis allow distributed teams to collaboratively write and edit documents through the Internet in a shared online workspace, without the need for special HTML knowledge or tools. The flexibility of wiki technology is a boon for increased cooperative work on large team projects. However, wiki technology also complicates notions of usable design as the information architecture of a wiki site may be created on the fly by all participants rather than by a dedicated technical communicator. This paper describes the basic technology of wikis, some advantages and disadvantages, and areas of concern with regard to information design. http://tc.eserver.org/28272.html http://tc.eserver.org/28272.html Wikipedia may be the biggest technical document ever created, but it and other Web 2.0 elements present challenges. Read about the popularity of Wikipedia, then let Intercom know about your professional experiences using wikis, blogs, and other Web 2.0 applications. http://tc.eserver.org/28125.html http://tc.eserver.org/28125.html Your staff may already be using one of the most productive collaboration tools ever built. http://tc.eserver.org/27999.html http://tc.eserver.org/27999.html We explain why we chose a wiki-based content management system (CMS) as the basis for the portal for KeyContent.org. We compare various tools and discuss other sites that have implemented similar software for collaborative solutions. http://tc.eserver.org/25800.html http://tc.eserver.org/25800.html wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest how-to manual. With your contributions, we can create a free resource that helps people by offering clear, concise solutions to the problems of everyday life. http://tc.eserver.org/25056.html http://tc.eserver.org/25056.html Blogs are about to give way to a new development. Wikis are web sites within which any user can quickly and easily edit much of the content, without HTML. This idea regarding user-generated online content goes beyond the comment posting of a standard blog. Blikis are blogs that have wiki support, so that users can edit the comments posted.