OT: Tech Writers & Wikis

[Keith Arnett]

I have worked for two companies where wikis were used in a software
development environment. Based on that experience, I haven't been favorably
impressed. The tantalizing premise of "everyone can share their information
with everyone else" can be seriously compromised by lack of content
organization.

Unless someone takes on an organizational guidance/enforcement role, the
wiki becomes nothing more than a dumping ground for information that no one
can locate. Will White's "anarchipedia" label hits the nail on the head. I
cringe when I hear the words, "Oh, you can get that on the wiki" during a
team meeting.

In my experience, the wikis were set up by the software engineering team,
mostly as a "self-help" tool and without input from QA or Doc. The wiki
"organization' is more along the lines of "we'll make it up as we go along,"
making it extremely difficult to locate pertinent information. 

However, with a bit of planning and shared input, the wiki format has lots
of potential. My own observation is that in today's rapid application
development environment, most development teams don't have the time or
inclination to do this.

Regards,

Keith Arnett
Senior Technical Writer
webMethods, Inc.\ Fairfax VA

-----Original Message-----
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:39:13 -0700
From: Whites <whitefamily at mac.com>
Subject: Re: OT: Tech Writers & Wikis
To: Diane Gaskill <dgcaller at earthlink.net>
Cc: Framers <framers at frameusers.com>

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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