OT: Tech Writers & Wikis

[Whites]

For starters, to the guy at SFSU trying to learn how to write, take  
another run at that sentence: "I am writing a white paper for my  
class, and I'm searching for writers
who use wikis."

I've been asked before what I thought about wikis in a software  
documentation environment. I suspect that the only reason  
Anarchipedia works at all is because there exists a large population  
of educated types who are willing to contribute and who are able to  
do so because they are writing their entries on someone else's  
nickel. Probably university souls who would otherwise be preparing  
lectures or grading some of the few papers that students still claim  
to write. Or maybe they are just avoiding their tedious chores.

I'm dubious that folks in most development environments have the  
leisure to dawdle around in a wiki when they have their own workloads  
to get through. Or am I misunderstanding the charm of a wiki? It  
sounds like a mechanism to convince other people to do my work.

will white

On Mar 18, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Diane Gaskill wrote:

> I am writing a white paper for my class, and I'm searching for writers
> that use wikis.

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There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture
out of such a trifling investment of fact. - Twain
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