[Pmwiki-users] RE: pmwiki-0.6.beta1 released

[Christian Ridderström]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 04:36:03PM -0000, dave.jackson wrote:
> > 
> > It is just that I am trying to 'sell' Wiki to my boss (for elimination
> > of doubt, not for money), and the ease at which I can create a link with
> > {{xxx}} syntax is so appealing.
> 
> On this topic, I'm working on a paper (or series of papers) that articulates
> some of the problems in "selling a wiki concept" to others. I would
> love to hear comments, stories (both successes and failures), or 
> suggestions from others about this.  
> 
> I already know of several of the largest barriers: 
>    (1) perceived lack of security and/or control of the wiki, 
>    (2) the markup is seen as being too complex, or wiki lacks a WYSIWYG 
>        editor, and
>    (3) the markup is seen as being too limiting, and cannot achieve
>        all of the functionality of a pure HTML/XHTML/XML environment.
> 
> Anyone have any other barriers, comments, or ideas on this they'd like
> to share?

What is the purpose of the wiki site? IMO there's a difference between:
 * You want to easily/quickly create and maintain a site.
 * You want a "true" wiki site for a community

As for the latter, I've find that the main problem is getting people to 
start contributing. Why people don't do that is probably a chapter in 
itself :-)

Oh, and related to (1). At my old department, "security" reasons made 
it nigh impossible to be allowed to set up a wikiengine. (That guy is very 
security conscious, and badly written script code can make a mess of 
things I guess).

/Christian

-- 
Dr. Christian Ridderstr?m, +46-8-768 39 44       http://www.md.kth.se/~chr