Hi together,

As mentioned before, this mailing list is not
very active because most of the discussions
around Wiki systems is done at Ward's original
Wiki site and specific Wiki clone sites like
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/ (You can
see from the Changes page that it is very
active).

In fact, by the very nature of Wiki systems and
people used to it, a mailing list is not the
preferred way of communication among Wiki'ers.

Christophe Vermeulen wrote:
>
> Michael C White wrote:
> >
> > Hello Christophe,
> > from regional Australia.
> > I have a theory about wiki.
> > I find the idea of wiki just awe inspiring.
>
> Don't misunderstand me. I'm profoundly convinced of the huge
> advantages of wiki, enough to be (or have been) an advocate of
> it in my company ...

Wiki style collaboration is a excellent way of
sharing knowledge, especially in the corporate
world. Read my article in the Dec 2000 issue
of the Web Techniques magazine, "Corporate
Collaboration with TWiki",
http://www.webtechniques.com /archives/2000/12/thoeny/

> > Why the world just did not grab it and use it I am puzzled.
>
> In two words : it's not trivial to install, and the results
> are not flashy enough (e.g. not easy to insert images, etc.)

I don't believe these are the real factors, at
least for the corporate world the main issues
are human factors:

* Habits: It takes time to get used to
collaborate the Wiki way. Voices like "I
prefer e-mail for internal communication".

* Control: Management is intrigued to let
employees fiddle around with Intranet
content. Voices like "This leads to chaos".

* Property: Ownership vs. team work. Voices
like "What, I can't change a page someone
else started".

* Knowledge hoarding: A corporate culture
where sharing of knowledge is encouraged
is more likely to succeed in rolling out
a Wiki system. Voices like "I am less in
demand if I share my knowledge".

I see an exponential growth of Wiki system usage
within corporations. At Wind River for example
it took a long time to catch on within a few
groups. But then, usage grew exponentially. To
illustrate, here is the word count of the TWiki
usage logs:

154 2566 13886 log200004.txt
538 8770 48165 log200005.txt
2573 42219 236860 log200006.txt
8856 146087 844167 log200007.txt
2873 46679 267940 log200008.txt
3894 63467 366619 log200009.txt
7783 127449 744247 log200010.txt
14239 234047 1396782 log200011.txt
16918 282206 1699836 log200012.txt
28598 468698 2819218 log200101.txt
22369 365184 2203262 log200102.txt
35470 578500 3415407 log200103.txt
39183 640660 3826138 log200104.txt
39763 650871 3885233 log200105.txt
50734 831739 4982222 log200106.txt
11590 189351 1144759 log200107.txt

Now we have almost 600 registered users in TWiki,
several thousand pages, and 4000 page updates per
month. So once it is popular within some groups
it can be infectious like a virus (in a positive
sense ;-).

> > Maybe the name wiki is not readily understood worldwide.
> > It was a word I had never heard until I began researching
> > collaborative software.
>
> I don't think that's the issue. Call it Tex2Web if you want,
> it won't change anything. Well, maybe I should TradeMark that
> name ? ;-)

More and more people know the term at least, but
not so many actually have been exposed to a Wiki
system. There are some good references, like for
example the paper by Jon Udell, "Internet
Groupware for Scientific Collaboration",
http://software-carpentry.codesourcery.com/Groupware/report.html

Also, as mentioned elsewhere, Bo Leuf and Ward
Cunningham published the book "The Wiki Way:
Quick Collaboration on the Web", Addison Wesley,
2001. It seems to sell well, TWiki gets lots of
leads from the book.

-- Peter.Thoeny@... - http://www.WindRiver.com/
-- Peter@... - http://TWiki.org/