Shhh…it’s because we haven’t announced it yet…

Keep in mind, Deki Wiki is a wiki interface to a distributed application platform. What is meant by this is that users of Deki Wiki get the immediate value of a wiki: improved collaboration around text, file, and email, but also are able to connect and mashup systems, databases, external services, and Web 2.0 applications by creating composite applications and data mashups. This is achieved while still allowing a site administrator, presumably someone within enterprise IT, to provide governance of the data and services that users can access. The end result is a user-centric interface to data that is dynamically generated from traditional data silos.

Stay tuned, in the next couple weeks we’ll have some news about that site you mentioned and some other new announcements from MindTouch.

Also, I tried several times to “infect” my team and coworkers with wikies, but they proved to be surprisingly resistant. :-( I guess that there are two classes of people around: the majority resistant to wikies, and the minority fanatical about them.

My dream is to find a wiki (that is easy to set-up, ala wxwikiserver) that supports scientific/math notation (TeX). I know that Mediawiki (as implemented at Wikipedia) can do that, but all business of having to install database and to learn PHP (and have a dedicated machine hogged by them) did not work for me.

Mainly because people are afraid of wiki markup and also because we hardly think in another way than MS-Word flat organisation of documents.

We have tested for about one year now http://www.clearwiki.com , which is a hosted one. We loved it, it has many of these features we want to have as intranet editor : WYSIWYG editor, tagging system, map of the wiki, export as HTML features and much more. Unfortunately, we didn’t find a way to convert it into internal intranet.

If some of you have ideas on how to make a wiki successfull, it would be of great help to me.

Best Regards
Anne

We also use wikis extensively internally for information sharing related to operations, projects and client management. We have tried several intranet tools over the years, but the wikis are fast to update and are getting a much higher adoption rate.

It is a little frustrating to learn yet another markup language, but once there are page templates set up it gets a lot easier.

I am considering using that service to set up a page for the final preparations for my <a href=”http://www.pushing50.net”<Just Over 50 and Not Dead Yet panel at South by Southwest Interactive on March 8.

It would give me a chance to get my feet wet (and reduce the e-mail back and forth).

I would be happy to meet those of you who make it to Austin.

Have a good day.

Serge
‘The French Guy from New Jersey’

Every company that I work for that doesn’t have a wiki will have one when I’m done. It’s such a useful concept for companies and departments. It enables content creation without the need for a pre-defined structure (or approval to publish, it’s really democratizing as well).

I prefer wiki implementations with the least number of features, as to Keep It Simple. The lower the threshold to participate, the more successful your wiki will become.

My startup is developing a wiki-based product and when I explain it to friends I have been surprised how few people actually know what a wiki is. These are generally non-technical people, but nonetheless frequent users of computers and the web.

I am convinced that wiki use is on the rise, but it does not yet seem to have reached the mainstream.

I’ll sell access to this reference, but I won’t make a big deal out of it being a wiki because most of my audience is wiki-shy and into control. I’ll say that it’s a reference that they can easily customize and build on.

I chose TWiki because it supports full HTML, though I usually just use its markup language (it also has a WYSIWYG editor plugin). I also chose it because it’s already used in several big corporations, which are my target market.

Most useful feature for me besides the full HTML: You can create your own variables to do everything from formatting text to spitting out complex charts. This has been especially helpful because I need to repeat several blurbs, tables, and images throughout the wiki, and the variables mean I can easily change all occurrences just by changing the spot where the variable was defined.

It took my tech person 2 hours to install TWiki and a bunch of plugins. My own learning curve has been mixed. Creating pages, attaching files, and similar stuff is really easy; managing users and permissions is confusing if you don’t do it regularly. There are way too many options in the default installation, and I spent a lot of time disabling and hiding stuff, especially in the public view of the wiki.

Also, they have a hosted version at http://wik.is where you can get a free account and later pay for more features. I’m using the hosted version for my church’s new website.

I think that one of the problems with acceptation is that people don’t really know what a wiki is. Secondly unlike WWD readers not everyone is an expert in working with all sorts of online tools. Thirdly your wonderful wiki is just work to someone else, aka “priority 1001″. Fourthly, you must have content already in. Most people are not writers and blank pages don’t fill themselves. Fifth, have a plan to get people involved. Sixth, don’t be afraid to mix things a little. Put elements like a people finder in the wiki. That’s something that is useful right away , while the wiki is still gaining critical mass. Seventh be aware that people are afreaid to share their knowledg, because in their old world thinking knowledge is power. They have to realize that keeping their knowledge secret is the speediest way obsolescence.

The hardest part is getting peoples head around the wiki concept and the content. This is also not specifically related to wiki’s. Somehow the silver bullet myth on applications can not be killed. People need to realize that databases, wiki’s etc. don’t fill themselves. There always needs to be a person to tap in everything. And that person needs time and must be paid for their work.

After 10 months, it’s great. Gets lots of use, and people have really taken ownership of their content.

Still a FEW holdouts who are afraid of the markup, but that was expected.

The number one requirement is that the wiki must have a WYSIWYG editor. So that people with no HTML knowledge (or people who aren’t technical) can also work with it. It’s also a lot easier for yourself.

A few other requirements are File Attachments, Revisions, Permissions, etc.

I have tried Socialtext, TWiki, Dokuwiki and Mediawiki. Unfortunately I find them not suitable for use in a company.

I have been trying to install Socialtext for over a week now and I still haven’t succeed. I find this until now the most promising one. It has WikiWyg (a WYSIWYG editor for wikis) integrated, tags, file attachments, rss feeds, etc. But the installation is too difficult and no support for MySQL and Apache 2. You can see how far I’ve come with Socialtext by looking it on Dokuwiki. Which doesn’t work very comfortable.

MediaWiki doesn’t even have a WYSIWYG editor. You can use Wikiwyg as an extension, but it is not recommended. Installation can be done, but updating is also not an easy task. If you want to update with Wikiwyg installed, then you have a problem.

TWiki is very easy to install in Debian, it has no WYSIWYG editor and the learning curve is very high.

Dokuwiki has a extremely easy installation. Plugins are also very easy to install. But it hasn’t got a WYSIWYG by
default. There is a plugin, fckw editor, but as you can see a lot of people are having trouble installing this plugin. Including me.

I found that most wikis also don’t have the possibility to create a “new page” from every page like a sidebar, topbar, whatever. Usually you have to install an extension for this or create one yourself. I find the tagging, which is default in socialtext, extremely useful, but couldn’t find it in the other wikis. I know how socialtext works because I used their virtual machine which they say is a demo.

I’m have just tried Deki Wiki and I am extremely excited. It has everything I need: WYSIWYG, file attachments, revisions, tags and a lot lot more. If you download the virtual machine and the vmware player, then you’re already done. Deki Wiki is a true recommendation.