Wiki verse Office Documents

This page is about documenting within a Wiki vs. documenting with standard office documents. It describes advantages and disadvantages of using a sophisticated wiki like MediaWiki for knowledge management and collaborative documentation. It also describes the way forward to establish new ways of knowledge sharing.

Advantages

• Users don't need an office client - just a modern W3C-compliant browser
• No compatibility problems between different office clients
• Well-proven Wiki syntax (like in Wikipedia)
• Very powerful handling of templates, which are dynamically rendered each time a page is loaded
  • Transclusion of content, which can be maintained on a single place, into any wiki page
  • Once the template is changed, any page using (transcluding) this template is changed accordingly
  • Templates support parameters like variables. Example: Parameterize a color or a table output
• Wiki pages can be tagged with categories and sub-categories -> list of pages per category
• It's easy to redirect pages. Example: Just enter "S4" and you will be redirected to the proper S4 page
• Many other features like syntax hightlighting, moving or renaming pages, watching pages to get notified on changes, page protections, etc. See Help:Contents.
• Built-in wiki search engine
• Full version history
• Possibility to use hundreds of great extensions like Semantic MediaWiki.
• Ability to combine many wikis to a central entry point by using namespaces and interwiki links. That leads to better linking between the wikis (without need of absolute URLs).
• Upload of regular files (e.g. office documents, images) possible in case this is needed

See also Help for an overview of features and ways of working.

Results

This results in:

• One central access point for information. No permission problems.
• Easy linking of content to built a real knowledge base - no single documents which makes it impossible to link knowledge
• Easy collaborative editing with a full history of changes within the complete knowledge base
• Write a document on one place and include it to any wiki page -> No redundant information, no different versions
• Categories could be created in order to help structuring content
• Search for a keyword will look throughout the complete knowledge base, not only a single document
• Anyone can create "shortcuts" to easily navigate to a certain page
• Users can manage notifications in case someone edits a page
• Users have full control over who has edited a page (history)
• Users can easily revert changes
• Users could combine a wiki with a "office document store", i.e. using the wiki as meta framework (TOC) on top of such an office store would be possible
• Content could be migrated step-by-step
• We could establish a semantic approach to tag content with their "meaning" and to dynamically search for information. Proper tagging can be done using forms.

Disadvantages

• Users must learn something new (how to use a wiki for editing pages)
• Export to office documents (e.g. PDF) needs proper extensions and does not provide the same look as experienced from standard office
• Editing tables is not much intuitive - but a WYSIWYG editor could be implemented
• We must agree on a common and flat access model. Any logged-in user can edit all pages. Read access is granted either for all visitors or for all logged-in users. No fine-granulated access control.

The way forward

A Study must answer the following questions:

• Which documents and knowledge bases are currently in use? Where?
• Is it possible to group certain documentation types or areas (like we did in Documentation)?
• Who is accessing the documents?
• Who is editing the documents? How? In a collaborative manner? Alone?
• What is the current access method and permission model?
• What are the pros and cons of the current situation? From user point of view and from management point of view.
• What can or shall be improved in terms of
  • documentation and knowledge quality
  • grade of collaboration
  • reviewing documents
  • get informed about changes
  • have a history of changes (in total knowledge base, not just on single documents)
  • easy (central) access to representative information (flat access model?)
  • central storage
  • re-use of documents and parts of it from a central place (instead of copy/paste)
  • structuring the documentation
  • linking between knowledge
  • barrier to share knowledge
  • getting a common look and feel (templates)
  • navigating through knowledge base (start page, categories, linking)
  • searching information
  • handle structured information (like lists and tables) and create dynamic views

Weblinks

• MediaWiki Feature List