[BBLISA] Wiki Guidance

[Steve Revilak]

> From: Rick Pike
> Subject: [BBLISA] Wiki Guidance


> After 2 years of looking for a job, I have finally found one as a redundant
> build/release engineer and I start next week.
>
> In order to try to capture and share their existing and evolving knowledge
> base, I am considering setting up a wiki which I've never done before. Does
> anyone have any suggestions to share on getting started and getting people
> to use it?

I've been pretty happy with UseModWiki:

  http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl

For the most part, it's one cgi.  There's an integrated search, and it
gives you the option of seeing diffs for each page updated.

As far as getting people to use it, a few ideas:

 - there's a low barrier to making content changes, so people are more
   likely to do it.

 - be very liberal about adding content.  If you keep a notebook at
   work, take the things that have general applicability and put them
   in the wiki.

 - if you need to document `how to do ___', put it in the wiki.

 - when someone asks you how to do something, put it in the wiki.
   Answer by sending the url of the wiki page.

Make it a valuable resource, and people will use it.

IMHO, Wikis don't work well for long, elaborate documents (design
docs, etc).  But for short sets of instructions, they're great.

Of course, be sure to make periodic backups of your wiki data :)


Steve