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Completely open wikis

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:27 pm
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.

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:53 pm
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.

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:31 pm
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?

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:36 pm
by RobertGonzalez
Personally I am not a big fan of wide open editable content as it just opens the door to infiltrating garbage.

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:15 am
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 :?