[Discuss] Opinions needed: wiki software

[Greg Rundlett (freephile)]

On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 11:46 PM, Rich Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:41:32 -0400
> Bill Horne <bill at horne.net> wrote:
>
> > The groups doesn't have any money, so any solution has to be
> > open-source. Please suggest some Document Management Systems that
> > qualify, and tell us why you recommend them.
>

> There are open source document management systems out there. A lot of
> them. I'm familiar with only a few and they have very specialized
> niches. I won't recommend any of them. Two reasons. One, none of them
> fit your users' needs. If they did then your users would already be
> using one of them or they'd be demanding one of them. Two, you don't
> have a document management strategy. Someone in the organization said,
> "let's throw a wiki at it". That's not a strategy; it's a disaster. You
> need to address this before you make any decisions.
>

Rich, You're throwing assumptions at the situation and also prescribing
what someone needs or doesn't need based on your past experience rather
than theirs.

>
> Ask Google about document management. Peruse the capabilities of the
> various offerings. Take note of systems that are used by organizations
> similar to yours. I say this because a DMS designed for use by a small,
> government-sponsored scientific research laboratory will be unsuitable
> for use by a bank.
>
> When it comes time to sell it to the organization you should stress the
> key differences between wikis and DMS. Wikis are made for rapid
> collaboration and note-taking. They're very good at managing many
> small, quick edits to mostly simple text.
>

Wikis are good at all kinds of things; like document mangement, project
managment, process mapping, visualization, pre-press, production,
workflows, knowledge collection, collaboration, group support, tickets,
time-tracking, data crunching, aggregation, versioning, collections,
images, multimedia, semantic data, data mining and reporting.  They depend
on what you configure it to do, integrate it with and decide how to use one.

-- 
Greg Rundlett
founder
eQuality Technology
http://eQuality-Tech.com