Jono has set up a wiki for use by the infopoint project – go check it out.
This is my first real experience of using a wiki – I’ve seen them on other sites, and understand the concepts behind them, but I’ve never identified them as being useful for myself or some of the solutions I implement. Having now used it for a few days and got my head round the concepts and the mechanics, I now understand how useful they are and why some people swear by them.
Before using the infopoint wiki, I would probably have implemented some form of bespoke CMS that satisfied the needs of the project. The trouble is, those needs need identifying before you can write the CMS. Then you have all the hassle of changing things (or potentially everything) when you realise they don’t quite meet your requirements. As Fred Brooks wrote in “The Mythical Man Month”:
plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.
Using a wiki allowed the site to get off to a flying start (I like to think I’ve contributed a fair bit towards that!), and once we find that pieces outgrow the contraints of the wiki (e.g. dynamic pages), they can be implemented based on what we’ve learnt from using the wiki.
This has led me to re-evaluate how I think of wikis, and I can now see several instances where I can implement them both professionally and personally. On which note, here are several interesting projects I’d like to highlight:
