/bin/cult -Rj

Apache should almost always be configured with mod_speling (which is one of the most amazing piece of software ever developed*) and any CMS worth it’s salt should provide at least equivalent functionality. The whole point of computers is that they should do what we want them to do and while guessing what we mean isn’t ideal, 404 is clearly not what we want.

* mod_speling is better even than the original red squiggly line spelling error code because it’s client-server

There are a number of issues to be solved around this space, not least being explaining to business people what a wiki is and how they revolutionise workflow.  Some other thoughts, in no particular order:

•  WYSIWYG
  • UI is so important.  TinyMCE isn’t a complete solution but it gets a lot closer.
• Presentation
  • Wikitext actually does pretty much everything that is required for most business documents but printing from a wiki doesn’t give you the same result as printing from Word.
  • Similarly, exporting to PDF or DOC doesn’t have the same utility as creating it in Word from the start.
• Sharing
  • Strange that this is a problem with a wiki, isn’t it? In real business, wikis are locked down to prevent access from outside the company, yet often revisions to documents come from partners, customers or suppliers.  These people are not going to get access to the entire wiki but there is no mechanism to provide access to only one page either.
  • Part of this problem could be solved if it were possible to import & export versions of a page.  If a document was exported to RTF, edited in Word (or some other standard business tool), saved and re-imported, many of the benefits of a wiki could be maintained and users that don’t have access could still contribute.
• Versioning
  • One of the biggest advantages to me in a wiki is being able to see the changes that someone else has made and this is generally held to be one of the real strengths of a wiki.  Yet my standard Word Processor shows me the changes others have made in a document much better than any wiki. This is an area in which a wiki should shine.
  • Suggested UI inspiration:
    • Time Machine
    • Word
• Using Data
  • Tables in a wiki are painful.  They are painful to create, painful to edit and they don’t really do a lot.  With the addition of a WYSIWYG editor, things improve a great deal but they are still static. We can import a near-infinite number of templates, yet we can’t add up the numbers in a column?
  • Maybe I’m overloading the concept of a wiki to include a spreadsheet; perhaps a wiki should just be for text and there is a better tool for numbers. Really?