My Wiki Quandry
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I’ve owned a wiki website that ran the WikiMedia engine (as does WikiPedia.org) for over a year. Over that year, I modified the wiki skin (i.e. theme) and added Google Adsense ad units. I also added some JavaScript code and invested time in learning the wiki syntax. I created many regular plain wiki pages and other colorful pages with tables and templates. I also wrote help documents explaining the wiki syntax and went further by creating a page that users could use to easily create new page/articles by simply typing in a text box and clicking a button.
I have recently decided to abandon using a wiki and instead to use a CMS solution.
My wiki was live and in production for over a year. During that time I created well over Three Hundred categories and published, along with the help of others, over Two Hundred articles.
After I introduced the website to a few users, I started noticing a problem. They often complained about their lack of technical/computer literacy and how that rendered using the wiki impossible. After hearing from Ten people who were all less technically inclined than myself I decided to find an alternative to the wiki syntax, since most the users were immediately turned off by the notion of having to use some “programming language” syntax.
Personally, I didn’t mind the wiki syntax. I learned it and used it; it was limiting in terms of what styling effects it could generate., but I understood the importance of wiki syntax to wikis. Wiki syntax is a part of a wiki’s identity. Almost all the wikis out there were built to use wiki syntax and not a visual editor (i.e. HTML). Regardless, the problem that most my website users did not like the lack of a visual text editor was worth noting. This website was meant to be used by others, not just myself. If they couldn’t use the website due to the lack of a visual editor then the website project would fail flat on it’s face. Next began my search for a WYSIWYG modification or plugin that I could add on to my MediaWiki.
After numerous hours of research and after testing out various wikis, my decision was to abandon using a wiki for my website project all together and to instead use a Content management System (CMS) tool like Drupal, PHPnuke and the likes. This decision was not easy, however, I should’ve reached this decision earlier, say, Six months ago.
My recent decision to stop using a wiki means I will loose a portion of the work I did over a year. This loss is not due to a certain shortcoming in the wiki I used or any other wiki software; rather it was due to my lack of preparation. Had I thoroughly investigated my website project’s scope and analyst it’s business needs earlier on, I should have noticed that my website scope was incompatible with what wikis had to offer.
After testing multiple wikis, I noticed they all lacked a WYSIWYG editor; I came to the conclusion that the lack of a WYSIWYG editor in wikis was by design. Wikis are built to be editable by anyone, in any web browser.Using a WYSIWYG editor will render some web browsers unusable thus preventing some from being able to edit the wiki’s articles.
This is clearly demonstrated on WikiPedia, in my article with the WikiPedia CheatSheet. I quote:
Everyone can contribute to the free encylopedia Wikipedia. This is possible because Wikipedia is a wiki: Simply click on the link “Edit this page“ on top of an article and start writing.
Furthermore, wikis, rightly so, do not like to include HTML code in the articles’ content (i.e. text). Using HTML to style text is an old practice that should be abandoned. I also may add that wikis care more about their encyclopedic content more than how pretty this content is visually.
I fully understand the arguments presented above. If I may just add my 2 cents to this philosophy; by not having an easy visual text editor, wikis are not truly editable by anyone. This is because not every human is willing to learn the wiki syntax. To be truly editable by everyone, you could keep the wiki syntax, but on top of that add a visual editor that could translate visual text styling into wiki syntax. Users then could choose between the visual editor or plain wiki text. Everything is done in wiki syntax, no HTML, it’s a win-win. This can be accomplished using AJAX.
This is a definition of what a wiki is. I quote from the most famous wiki to date, WikiPedia:
A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. They are being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work”.
My requirements for the wiki/or CMS are simple. Be written in PHP, use a MySQL database not a file system, be free and open source. Allow multiple registered members to create and edit pages. Pages should be categorizable. Comments allowed. Easy to find attractive themes. Solid online community support.
A few wiki engines do come with WYSIWYG editors like MoinMoin, PmWiki and TWiki. However they all use a file system not a database. TWiki is written in Perl and MoinMoin in Python.
Before you take on a project, make sure you understand your project’s needs. Create a scope and analyze the business user requirements, then go out looking for software tools.
Note: Watch for future articles that will discuss and compare multiple wikis, will show you what your WYSIWYG options are and will discuss and compare various CMS tools. There are a few options for adding a WYSIWYG editor on to MediaWiki, but they are all buggy.
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:06 am
I need to clarify what I meant when I said “I have recently decided to abandon using a wiki and instead to use a CMS solution.”
What I meant to say that I will abandon using wikis for a different type of content management system (CMS). A wiki is one type of CMS software.
A CMS is a system used to manage the content of a Web site. Content management systems are deployed primarily for interactive use by a potentially large number of contributors.
MediaWiki, the software used by Wikipedia is based on a wiki, which is a type of CMS.
Also, when I say CMS, I am talking about a Web Content Management System.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
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January 4th, 2008 at 9:12 am
[…] agency, there is likely a well suited Open Source CMS solution for you.Since my decision to abandon using a wiki and find another CMS solution, I’ve reviewed over a Hundred options. I was looking for a […]