Can WordonWiki be compared to MS SharePoint?
March 17th, 2010
In a blog post of Martin Seibert called MS SharePoint as a Wiki: Few Functions, less Compatibility the author gives his view if MS SharePoint could be used as a Wiki.
His answer is simply "No".
Being this Microsoft Word dependent webservice, we looked closely to see if any of his arguments could be applied to WordonWiki. Let's run down the main reasons the author gives to justify his view.
Speed
MS SharePoint's architecture allows for a multi-server setup, forcing libraries and documents to be downloaded from one server to another. As there is no preview function, the document needs to be opened before it is viewable.
Thankfully, WordonWiki operates slightly different. It only requires you to download the page in case you need to edit it.Further optimizations will buffer pages on the user's machine to speed up even further the edit operation.
User Productivity
We were surprised to know MS SharePoint does not have a full-text search feature. This was foreseen in WordonWiki right from day1, requiring us to foresee special full text tables that can be indexed by mySQL text indexes. Not only for the current version of the page, but across revisions as well.
Lack of compatibility
Clearly you need MS Office on your machine if you want to work with MS SharePoint or WordonWiki. However unlike MS SharePoint, WordonWiki works on all major browsers like IE, FF, Safari and Chrome.You wouldn't settle for less. Nor would we.
Hide or Share
By default, MS SharePoint's documents are hidden, you need to flag them as public to make them visible. Indeed the exact opposite of what we expect from a wiki.
Origin of the product
MS SharePoint originally was a 'portal' solution. It has some data centric features added and the recent addition is the wiki feature. I've been at customer workshops where people actually believe that SharePoint's Wiki solution is as good as any. Clearly a big hooray for Microsoft's marketing departments.
Another big nono that Microsoft faces is the fact that MS SharePoint is very 'document' centric. This document centric strategy is what made Microsoft great in the 90ties. However, a wiki is basically 'page' centric. Microsoft has become big on this document adagio, but it doesn't translate it well to wikis.
Usability
Overall, SharePoint has a considerable learning curve. It has too many bells and whistles. Granted, it can do everything from making coffee to walking the dog, but that is not always what you need. There is a definitive need for simplicity.
The conclusion
There are many more points the author makes, but we covered those relevant to WordonWiki. The view of the article is critical but offers many insights on the nature of how and why people use a wiki. We feel that we live up to that challenge with WordonWiki. However, the last word is always with the user. Please comment to give us feedback.
Wiki's haven't grown up yet
March 16th, 2010
Searching for some competitive wiki overviews, the top sites that google showed were:
What is strange about these overviews is that both use the product's programming language as its main or primary structure. Who would want to know that? I can understand the IT guy having to install it is wondering what prerequisite libraries to install, but no end-user, manager or project leader should be bothered by the programming language of the tool.
For us that is one more sign that wikis and wiki usage haven't grown up yet to meet the challenges of the corporate world. These products were created by the tech community and are still trying to grow beyond that. Up to this day, we are confronted with people arguing why anyboy would need Wysiwig editing in a wiki. Luckily most wiki tools have now a wysiwyg option in their offering.
Not to be underestimated is the effect of wikipedia. Wikipedia has such a status that when people talk about 'putting it in THE wiki', they implicitely mean 'wikipedia'. As a result, there is an huge number of mediawiki installations. Installed out of the box, mediawiki has no support for wysiwyg.
Looking at the advantages a wiki can bring in most teams, it's a pity we are still struggling with the 'techie' image of the wiki usage. We talked to many people and all too often you get the same complaints: 'If only our business users would be using the wiki', 'Why can't we get the people from the other departments on the wiki?'
One of the greatest resources on wiki selection is http://www.wikimatrix.org. The site offers great features to compare the different wikis and we are happy to say the programming language is just another feature you can use to compare wikis.
If you got on this blog post using google search on 'wiki' and 'programming language', we won't dissappoint you with the graph below as it is currently shown on wikimatrix (look for an up to date version on http://www.wikimatrix.org/statistic/Programming+Languages)
What do you need in a Wiki?
February 23rd, 2009
There are tons of features that vendors put in wikis. Yet we think that 80% of them is never used and just gets in the way of a good user experience. The art is to build something simple, without being simplistic. If you browse www.wikimatrix.org, you’ll be amazed about the featuritis.
So what will we do:
- Easy, yet powerful
- Simple interface
- Focus on key features
So this is our list of killing key features:
- Create wiki pages automatically. E.g. entering [[Cats]] creates a new page.
- Wysiwig editing for lists, tables, pictures. Support drag and drop.
- Automatically create 1/table of contents, 2/table of wanted pages and 3/ list of recent changes
- Multiple versions of a page. Go back to a previous version. Make visual diff’s between page versions.
- Simple privileges scheme: admins, writers and readers. Applied to the whole wiki, a subpart, or a page.
- RSS.
- Export wiki to static html pages.
Everything which is not on the list, we don’t do. If you think we miss something, please reply to this post. We intend to develop our roadmap, based on the feedback we get here.
Who’s using OpenOffice?
February 1st, 2009
Our software is based entirely on MSWord. Yet we get many requests to also support OpenOffice and other html editors. Before we jump on this, we’d like you to reply to this post explaining us what you think about this.