None

[Christopher Browne]

> In a message dated: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 08:56:00 CST
> Linas Vepstas said:
> 
> >I have some reservations about wiki's in general, though.  If you have
> >ever used any, you will note that they are invariably badly organized 
> >and ugly looking  to boot.  They still need a strong editorial hand to
> >be worthwhile.   I did see some related tool faq-o-matic or something
> >like that, that was not sinfully ugly.  I'm thinking the best looking,
> >and most usable, would be a slashdot-like thing, e.g. phpnuke, or
> >whatever.  It avoids the problems that wiki's have.
> 
> I feel the same about wikis in general.  However, with a strong 
> editorial hand, they can be quite organized.  But it will require 
> determination and vigilence of the person(s) maintaining the site.
> 
> FAQ-O-Matic on the other hand, is designed to be strongly organized 
> and less free form than a wiki.  But again, it too has the 
> possibility to creep out of control.
> 
> It boils down to this: both are tools which are meant to assist in 
> solving different types of problems, but neither is a complete 
> replacement for a human.  Technology is seldom the answer to that 
> which basically a human behavioral problem.  i.e., people have a 
> tendancy to be sloppy, and these tools will allow that behavior :)

The big problem with /any/ of these tools is that they are good for
generating ad-hoc bits of documentation, but are pretty weak at
integrating this together to push it into more formal document sets.

What I haven't seen that I'd like to see is a tool that would turn a
Wiki into one big interlinked DocBook document; that would go a long
ways towards allowing Wiki work to be integrated into "traditional"
document sets.  The result would be a pretty sloppy set of DocBook, but
that's better than nothing...
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/docbook.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord  #129. "Despite the delicious irony, I will
not force two heroes to fight each other in the arena."
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/>