We've recently installed a wiki for the project that we are working on. A wiki is a great collaboration tool and it has proven itself in the past, replacing Excel spreadsheets in several collaboration scenarios.
My question is: How does one prevent the wiki from becoming a dead artefact in the project? Putting it more specifically, How can one ensure that every team member contributes what she should to the wiki?
I don't have a definitive answer to this question. What I am after is that the community here shares links, tips and guidelines that have really worked in making a project wiki a success. So please blog (and trackback) and comment!
Some more questions that I have:
- What wiki solution do you use in your organisation? What motivated that decision?
- Would you consider paying money for a wiki solution?
- What do you put on your wiki? What do you not put on your wiki?
- Is there be elements of your wiki that should be versioned alongside the source code?
My initial thoughts:
- Don't put source code on your wiki - this belongs in version control.
- Do put the project milestones on the wiki, or at least link to the system that publishes your project milestones.
- Do put the location of your source code on the wiki. Be careful if the wiki is visible from the internet -- you do not expose information that you do not want to expose.
- If an email is sent to the team regarding the source code, a change in the process, a how to, etc. then take the contents of that email and put it onto the wiki.
Your thoughts?