What happened to the Wiki?

I just happened to go visit it just now, having completely ignored it for months, and it seems that I’m not the only one who’s not been going there. Pretty much looks like nothing has happened since the end of the initial surge of excitement when it first came into being.

I know I was one of the few who didn’t want a Wiki, and wasn’t convinced it was worth having, but I didn’t think it would die as quickly as this :(.

It was really not set up for the best type of Wiki use:

Publishing

Wiki’s need to have organized areas where people feel they can add content. This requires the admin to do some preemptive organization and put up links for people to fill in. Our Wiki was grown a little more organically, and as a result, only basic info was added.

Also, the “feel” of the Wiki adds to people’s willingness to use it. For example, Wikipedia has a nice “paper print” feel to it that some wikis (like TWiki) tend to miss.

For a good Wiki example, try the JOSRTS one (special thanks to Leknor):

http://josrts.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/

A particularly good example (if I do say so myself) is the Alpha Mask results document:

http://josrts.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/AlphaMaskResults

Can’t stand Wikis. Make me feel like I’m using vi to edit Java code instead of an IDE. Know what I mean? Crap client interface to an otherwise great idea. So much software lives and dies by its interface. The WWW would never have caught on without Mosaic.

Cas :slight_smile:

[quote]Can’t stand Wikis. Make me feel like I’m using vi to edit Java code instead of an IDE.
[/quote]
While I know what you mean, a good wiki is still better than anything else currently on offer. The editing interface on this forum isn’t exactly great either.
We use an internal Wiki here and while it does grate at times, it is also vastly superior to what preceded it.