[GLLUG] How can a Wiki be used?

[Jason Green]

On 4/24/06, Frank Dolinar <frank.dolinar at comcast.net> wrote:
>      I'm looking at wiki software from the point of view of understanding
> all the things it can do.  Further, I'm trying to see how a wiki might be
> used in ways other than something like Wikipedia, for instance.
>      What interesting uses can you think of for a wiki and why do you think
> it would be valuable in that role?

We use it at my office in the MIS department to document all of our
internal procedures.  There are 5 of us on staff now, and we began
realizing how much there is to learn when a new person comes on board.
 So, we basically just came up with the shell of an organizational
pattern to use, and started adding topics to the wiki that were
crucial to our role in the company (what software do we use, how do
you install it, where do we go to look for licensing, who uses this
piece of software, who's the vendor, what's our support contract
status, what are other alternatives to possibly use in the future, how
do we maintain _____, etc.)

The great part is that you can just put brackets around something that
you know you need to talk about more, and come back to it later.  It
will bug you every time you go to that page if there's a little
question mark next to it telling you that there's no details about
that topic, so eventually you fill it in.

That documentation has become invaluable to us, and we constantly
refer to it.  There are really only 2 of us that wrote the majority of
the content, and it's already up to about 300 pages worth, all
cross-linked and somewhat easy to navigate.

We tried rolling one out to our non-technical executive team, but they
really didn't like the idea of having to learn a markup language, and
they really just saw it as "one more thing to check for updates", so
that didn't really fly.  Having a wiki with a Rich-text editor would
be fantastic, and I'm sure they exist, I just haven't gone looking in
a while.

Hope this helps!