SPUG: Re: SPUGwiki Needs Photos, etc.

Scott Blachowicz scott+spug at mail.dsab.rresearch.com
Tue Jul 22 18:22:54 CDT 2003


"James Moore" <james at banshee.com> wrote:

> I certainly don't object to other people setting them up, but it doesn't
> surprise me that they don't always get that much input.  What does a wiki
> buy that a mailing list doesn't have?

One thing I can think of is that because people can edit the pages in
place, the collection of pages represent the "current state" of whatever
they are documenting. With mailing lists, you get all kinds of incremental
contributions over time and it can be hard to collect them into a "current
state".

For example, on a mailing list, I can post a "how to fool a fribnitz"
message and over time various people respond to correct me and each other.
They also correct each other. So, when someone wants to know how to fool
a fribnitz, they could search the mailing list archives and have to sift
through the entire thread to figure out what to do. With a wiki page
system, the corrections happen to the one HowToFoolAFribnitz page, so you
can go to that one place to figure that a fribnitz is easily fooled by
stick riddles...

Scott



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