Completely open wikis

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
This forum is not for asking programming related questions.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Chris Corbyn
Breakbeat Nuttzer
Posts: 13098
Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:57 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Completely open wikis

Post by Chris Corbyn »

I'm in the process of porting all my documentation for one of my projects over to dokuwiki because it's so much easier to maintain.

I'm not exactly the best at writing useful documentation with example code so I'm planning on opening the wiki so that anybody can just click EDIT and make changes. Obviously, there's a large amount of trust involed here.

Has anyone done this themselves and chucked the idea away after numerous issues? I'll make nightly backups so any damage can be fixed quickly but I'm curious if anyone has any first hand experience of maintaining an open wiki?

I'm using DokuWiki if that helps... it's currently closed to just me... but not for much longer.
User avatar
feyd
Neighborhood Spidermoddy
Posts: 31559
Joined: Mon Mar 29, 2004 3:24 pm
Location: Bothell, Washington, USA

Post by feyd »

The only thing I'd be concerned with is vandalism and spammers using it. Any wiki worth its salt will have many ways of restricting submissions. You'll probably need a few moderators that frequent the wiki to help protect it. I haven't gone through the features of DokuWiki, so this may be covered, but I would recommend using a wiki that offers restrictions on the individual page level as well globally.
User avatar
superdezign
DevNet Master
Posts: 4135
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:06 pm

Post by superdezign »

And, if you have the capability, censorship could probably do you some good. There are people who get bored and like to make racial slurs and sexual references where the public can see it, just for the hell of it. Have you ever been to a website with a live, anonymous comment box?
User avatar
RobertGonzalez
Site Administrator
Posts: 14293
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2003 6:04 pm
Location: Fremont, CA, USA

Post by RobertGonzalez »

Personally I am not a big fan of wide open editable content as it just opens the door to infiltrating garbage.
User avatar
Chris Corbyn
Breakbeat Nuttzer
Posts: 13098
Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:57 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Post by Chris Corbyn »

Hmm... I have to admit, I'm not that familiar with the features of DokuWiki myself. Perhaps simply requiring sign up would be a deterrent. Even better, allow changes to be made but like a wordpress blog, require moderation before they become visible.... not sure how that could work with a wiki though. I was hoping I could encourage a stronger set of documentation if it wasn't closed... On the same token, if people got the wrong end of the stick and thought I'd written some dodgy comment it could do wonderful things to my chance of finding employment in the future :?
Post Reply