[Zope-dev] Wiki Pain

Ken Manheimer klm@digicool.com
Thu, 14 Sep 2000 13:24:21 -0400 (EDT)


On Thu, 14 Sep 2000 mbel44@dial.pipex.net wrote:

> Since the beginning of this year DC have moved alot of debate and
> discussion out of mailing lists, and in to Wikis.
> http://www.zope.org/WikiCentral/FrontPage lists most Zope Wikis. Does
> anyone else find Wikis to be far less convenient than a good old
> mailing list?

Convenient for what?  If you've ever tried to support a community
through a mailling list, you'll quickly notice that questions, and
their corresponding answers, repeat.  A lot.  The problem is that
while maillists are great for keeping people up-to-date on the
business of the community, and for disseminating dialogue, they are
not so good for building structures - for organizing content so
related pieces of a story are appropriately connected.

(Note that i do *not* dislike mailling lists - before i joined DC i
resurrected mailman from an abandoned prototype and developed it for
use on python.org, because we needed a customizable system for
conducting the ongoing business of the python community.  Maillists
just are not right for building structures.)

Wikis, as they stand, are not bad for organizing stories.  We all sorely
miss change notifications and ownership attribution, a preview button, etc
- but they're better, even as they currently stand, for building
longstanding artifacts than are mailling lists.  And hopefully, in not too
long, we'll be able to improve them, or provide something else, to do the
job right.

(I am not hopeful about the fate of the WikiNG proposal right now, the
powers that be are dictating that the PTK should be the medium for
this kind of thing - and i don't see how to fit the low-impedence
features of the wiki in there, and so will be severely disappointed if
WikiNG doesn't fly, but that's up to others.  In any case, *something*
is clearly needed - the wikis are just the best fit for part of the
job, right now.)

Ken Manheimer
klm@digicool.com