SPUG:YAPC Wiki Site

[Andrew Sweger]

On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Michael R. Wolf wrote:

> Could someone clue me in on why Wiki is better than listserv, email
> lists, news, SMTP, and NNTP, all of which are directed to my favorite,
> familiar news/email readers (which I won't share the name of, because
> it's not relevant to my argument -- lots of folks could substitute
> their favorite news/email reader and make the same point).

Hello from the muggy mouth of the rat (Boca Raton).

The short answer is that a Wiki is not better. It is different. It's more
like the bulletin board at the local grocery store. But one with unlimited
area and links dynamically created between relevant topics. And anyone can
walk up and change it.

A wiki is an excellent way to preserve knowledge that was learned by hard
work so it's not lost to "future generations". And updating the
information doesn't have to wait for some special person to update the
information (a bottleneck). Wiki abhors control (although Kwiki will let
you add control if you want it).

A good example of preserving knowledge is this year's YAPC Wiki,
yapc.kwiki.org. Instead of everyone asking on the mailing list for
information, they can check the Wiki. It's a community driven FAQ, and
then some.

SeattleWireless has had an awesome Wiki running for years now. Tons of
information there, seattlewireless.net. The entire site is essentially a
Wiki.

Heck, I just set up another Wiki this morning for LlamaCard. (Coming soon)

-- 
Andrew B. Sweger -- The great thing about multitasking is that several
                                things can go wrong at once.