OT: Tech Writers & Wikis

[Chris Borokowski]

I won't use WikiPedia as a source anymore because I've
been burned too many times. The writers tell you what
they want to tell you, which is often far from
comprehensive. It's a very biased, often inaccurate,
source. It's worth the extra five minutes to do the
real research.

However, wikis as a concept shouldn't be confused with
Wikipedia. I like wikis in small settings like
companies where someone can fix or weed out the
inaccurate. As someone else here said, they're
conversational sources of information. People document
informal best practices through them, and you should
consider them like a half-drunk SME: they'll give you
an answer that's mostly complete in a shorthand of
their own.

--- Whites <whitefamily at mac.com> wrote:

> 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.




 
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