About wikis

I already have had discussions with several people about the proper use of wikis. Apparently, a wiki does not mean the same thing to different people. This article is a place holder for me to explain what I mean by wiki, especially with regard to a Drupal implementation of a wiki.

Signal to noise ratio

I have already recommended settin up a wiki node type when creating a Drupal site.

Wikis are great to increase the signal over the ambient noise. Wikis are a must for any collaborative work and ought to be used in every communities.

Wikimedia and specialized wiki software vs. Drupal

Wikipedia is certainly not the first wiki, but it is by far the most known. Wikipedia is powered by the software Wikimedia. The tendency is then to compare any other wiki software to Wikimedia.

I love wikipedia: I consult it very regularly and occasionally contribute toit. Wikimedia is certainly a very fine software. However, I see two basic flaws with wikimedia which makes that it is not the proper tool to create every web site, not even those meant to be centered around a wiki.

The first problem is actually by design: wikimedia is a wiki software and mostly that. Other features have been added but only as an afterthought. If you only need a wiki, then wikimedia is the tool for you. However, in the sites I design, I always want the wiki to be integrated with other content types.

To take a simple example: suppose you want to have a wiki but also allow the users to have their own personal blogs. There is no way to nicely combine wikimedia, the wiki tool, with another software specialising in blogs. Often, web sites end up having two different setups, one with the blogs, and one with the wiki. Case in point: Daily Kos is based on Scoop, a blogging software. When they wanted to add a wiki, they ended up with a completely separate site, dKosopedia which runs on wikimedia. So the DailyKos users must have two user accounts on two different web sites to have both a blog and a wiki.

I much prefer having an integrated solution which is much more user-friendly. I like Drupal because it allows me to set up my own content types, including wiki, blog and others according to the specific needs of the web site I am creating.

But the result is that a Drupal wiki does not look like wikipedia.

The second problem I see with wikimedia is discussed in the next section.

Wikis as discussion medium?

I keep repeating that I like wikis because it allows for people to collaborate in order to improve the signal to noise ratio. The noise on the internet is deafening! Forums and mailing lists are overused while wikis are underused.

I love wikipedia because thanks to the collaborative efforts of thousand upon thousands of editors, each article that I wish to read is almost pure signal.

However, wikimedia talk pages is where one finds all the noise. Take the average wikipedia article with a moderate amount of discussion on the talk pages. You'll find many comments discussing the article, but you never quite know if the comments are still relevant or appropriate. Often, the comments may be months if not years old and discuss versions of the article that are completely different from the current version.

I certainly do not wish to recreate the same mess/noise machine on any of my Drupal wikis.

But there is a legitimate need for wiki editors to communicate with each other and discuss how the article should be edited. That's why I think the best tool for that is to combine the wiki with a bug/feature tracker where the discussion will take place. Once the article has been satisfactorily modified, the bug can be set as closed and forgotten. A user stumbling upon the bug entry will know straight away that the issue is obsolete and has been dealt with.

Speaking of coupling a Drupal wiki with the Drupal bugtracker (project.module and project_issue.module), there is one important feature still missing: I'd like one day to create a little module so that we can directly couple a wiki node to a project issue so that we can easily navigate between the two.

On other sites, a bugtracker may not be the proper tool to use along side the wiki. The comment section of a blog entry might be enough:
"Hey! Your blog entry is great. We should add this information into the wiki!"
Ok, let's do it!

The bottom line is that when I set up a Drupal web site, I have a wiki node type which corresponds only to the article section of wikimedia. I usually arrange for the discussion between users to take place elsewhere, using an appropriate content type.

Advanced wiki modules

A Drupal wiki can be made a simple or as complex as required. There exists scores of modules one can use to enhance the wiki functionality within a Drupal web site.

Personally, I prefer a simple set up, so I have not yet tested all the available modules. I'll add some notes here when I do.

The caveat is: please do not judge Drupal's wiki features using my own implementation of a Drupal wiki. That's one strength of Drupal: you can create your own sauce by combining the modules you want to get the specific result required.