Jul
18
Some Wiki-Related Frustration
July 18, 2007 |
I’ve been trying to identify a good wiki-style platform for collaborative authoring. As usual none of the contenders seem ideal. I’m looking for:
- Low-cost or open source
- Easy to install (or hosted)
- WYSIWYG editing of pages
- Ability to limit access to specified authors (only; I want only the authors to be able to read or modify entries–page locking would be nice).
- No imposition of GPL, CC or other licenses on users
- Support for discussions on pages
I’ve looked at MediaWiki, TWiki, PBWiki, SocialText, and a few others and none of them seem to manage all six (many have four or five of the points I’m looking for). So if there are suggestions out there I’d appreciate it.
UPDATE: I don’t mind if the product is GPL but I can’t have the content placed under a license. I’m looking for a wiki that could be used for BABOK development, and for legal reasons I need a) to avoid transfer of ownership and b) to not have it open to anybody to freely view or edit at this time. At a later date we may open up the content to IIBA members to use as a real wiki (I think there’s a lot of potential there) but unfortunately there are some practical and legal challenges to be solved first, and a controlled process is what we need at the moment.
I’d really like something that could scale up to be used by the entire membership some day (so handle thousands of users) but honestly that’s not the priority at the moment.
Comments
7 Comments so far
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Hi Kevin,
I’m not sure if you’ve seen this site:
http://www.wikimatrix.org/
I found it very useful when I was looking for a wiki platform.
Best regards,
- Adrian
You can’t have everything and free and no GPL. Our Deki Wiki product fits your needs. Download it for free here or http://OpenGarden.org.
Thanks, I’ll take a look at it.
I don’t mind if the product is GPL but I can’t have the content placed under a license. I’m really looking for a wiki that could be used for BABOK development, and for legal reasons I need a) to avoid transfer of ownership and b) to not have it open to anybody to freely edit. At a later date we may open up the content to IIBA members to use as a real wiki (I think there’s a lot of potential there) but unfortunately there are some practical challenges to be solved first, and a controlled process is what we need at the moment.
Some cost for hosting is acceptable but we are a non-profit and don’t have huge amounts of cash to throw around.
Heyas, I’m glad PBwiki was on your list. As the world’s largest host of private wikis, we can give you all six things you were looking for.
You can sign up for free in about twenty seconds and we take care of all of the aspects of hosting it (backups, scalability, networking). We have snappy WYSIWYG editing, page locking, page comments/discussions, and don’t impose any licenses at all on people.
We do charge for more detailed access controls, since these are generally tools that larger-scale businesses are likely to be interested in. We do our best to serve the community at large with a great, free, wiki and then get folks to “bring PBwiki to work” to help folks get their job done better with a fast, simple, secure wiki solution. So far, this model has worked well, with over 200,000 wikis hosted on our system and millions a month engaging the service.
I’d love to hear how we could do a better job both messaging our features and where you think the service could use improvement.
David (PBwiki’s CEO)
In the meantime if any practitioners want to share their ideas or otherwise contribute to BA wiki there is this wikia one.
Unfortunately the new pricing policy at PBWiki has moved it out of my budget range (the IIBA can’t afford $2500/year, not when other much lower cost alternatives exist), and the other associated costs are equally more than is practical. It’s too bad because PBWiki seemed like the best bet even though I had enocountered some annoying bugs.
Have you tried…
http://trac.edgewall.org/
http://www.activecollab.com/