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Subject: RE: [docbook-apps] [OT] - Doc in Wiki system
Jan, I know of a couple of things that might lead an organization to adopting Wiki technology for their help systems. 1) User annotation. One of the things lost when paper went away was the ability of users to add their own information to a document. This is important, particularly with complex systems and customizable systems. 2) Local extensibility. Many organizations invest heavily in customization and configuration of complex software. Being able to add their own information to the local distribution of the help system can be very important in this type of environment (instead of saying "log into the CMS" it can say "log into the CMS at https://local.system.company.com:280" and the more explicit help is, the better). 3) Allowing the user community to contribute. If there is an active user community, allowing the users to add information that they discover while using the product can be valuable, since they may take it into areas that the developers and documenters did not have time to investigate. 4) Reducing development costs. If you can get the users to write their own documentation (or part of it) you don't have to provide as much staff to do it. The first two items have been handled by various technological extensions to delivery engines over the years, but there is no uniform approach to it across systems and technologies. Both of them are issues that have made help systems less effective for large, complex systems (simpler systems tend not to need as much of either) and need to be considered when evaluating help delivery technologies for a project. The third item is a two edged sword. People may suggest ways of doing things that are not robust, particularly if they are based on incomplete knowledge of complex systems. How is the information filtered if incorrect or misleading posts are made (a problem with any "crowd sourced" information). What happens to the structure of the document over time (something that is not as critical in information that is always accessed by search, but documents that grow by aggregation instead of planned development can become quite confusing). Even if search is the primary access method, how do you tell which entry is the one that is most important for you, and how do you search effectively if you are new to the domain and don't know the vocabulary yet (a big advantage of indexes over full text search is that a good index teaches you the terms as you use it). Wikipedia has to add disambiguation pages and there are frequent discussions of whether pages need to be merged or split among the authors working on Wikipedia. I would not expect any company to admit to the fourth reason and it is cynical to bring it up, but given the amount of downsizing (or right-sizing or whatever it is called by the people who are doing it) that goes on in the tech industry, it cannot be ignored as a possible explanation. I am sure there are others (including "Wikis are the new buzz" which can not be ignored), but these are the ones I have looked at when the idea came up in design discussions I have been involved in. An important issue that came up in one of the discussions was legal -- who is liable for information added to an official document published by a company. It has a logo on the top of each page. Regards, Larry Rowland -----Original Message----- From: honyk [mailto:j.tosovsky@email.cz] Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 12:36 PM To: 'DocBook Apps' Subject: [docbook-apps] [OT] - Doc in Wiki system Helo Everyone, I've found one company which is switching their on-line help into Wiki system. Is this a trend, fashion or are there really some requirements not available in conventional channels? I've found one article with the nice comment from Mick Davidson http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/getting-content-into-and-out-of-wi kis/ It seems to the user more comfortable, but for me, at author side, quite scattered. I am asking myself: If version 1.0 of product will be released and help spread via WIKI and many users will add there their comments and responsible persons on other side give them responses in form of comments, what will happen with all this messages when version 2.0 of the product will be released? From my point of view all comments, if relevant, should be added immediately also into Help source (both actual 2.0 'trunk' and on-line 1.0 version should be synchronized). Yes, at the end this is beneficial, it makes next version of documentation more clear and user friendly... I see in the background system like docbook. Is docbook still the right choice? Or will be these wikis created directly without any other sources? I already understand to some recent needs for DocBook-Wiki round-trip. I will be soon at the same situation... Any comments or experience are welcomed. Regards, Jan --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-help@lists.oasis-open.org
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