Ask HN: alternative solutions for wiki

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6328730

by algorix • 13 years ago

3 6 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Mediawiki, Dokuwiki... differents names, same solution (technology/mechanism): wiki.

Can you see some alternative solution?

txutxu2• 13 years ago

Moin moin [0] is widely used too, and it has a version which can run without install [1]. You can put it i.e. on a USB, and carry your wiki with you.

Also, it's interesting ikiwiki [2], which puts your wiki on git. This may be very technical, or perfect, depends on the person.

Why do you think you need alternative solutions to those you said? What do you want to solve?

Used Dokuwiki years ago and it was ok for me. Still use mediawiki at work, even I've some scripts to auto-update the wiki from the infrastructure using the mediawiki api and templates.

Mediawiki is "the wiki", the only pain comes when you want to limit permissions matching say... the groups of an ldap... and things like that. It's not impossible, but it's a pain.

There are more options [3] and comparatives [4].

[0] http://moinmo.in

[1] http://moinmo.in/PortableMoin

[2] http://ikiwiki.info

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_software

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

Update: added links

algorix2• 13 years ago

Actually, all this tools you mentioned are great but based on wiki mechanism/technology.

I'm just thinking if out there are something that solves all problems that wiki solves but is not "wiki based".

I'm looking for a paradigm shift.

txutxu2• 13 years ago

Maybe we could define it as "collaborative editing of information".

Wikis is one technology, maybe tagging (and voting) is other technology, multiuser editors, mmm in the late days we can see "inline comments" too...

The way wikis solves that, is adding certain ingredients as "revision history".

There is a tool nowadays by excellence, for "revision history", and it's named "git". In the late days people speaks a lot about "github for writers" and things like.

Google apps, and alternatives, offer a step further (i.e. you can use google-sites as wikis with permissions, but integrating rich widgets).

mmm

We could say that stackoverflow and etc are a wiki based on questions/responses/comments...

I could prefer a CLI wiki (that you can edit with vim, render from markdown to ASCII colors, and query with ack or grep). But I don't know if this paradigm could be considered a "shift". Maybe it already exists, just that I haven't used it.

First thing you should consider in whatever platform/solution you're thinking is:

a) Attribution. Do you prefer to enable anonymous contributions, or do you prefer gpg signed ones?

b) Content access. Are you thinking about public wikis, private wikis ? This may change totally the solution...

Maybe a paradigm shift may emerge if you look at new devices... smartphones, etc... is a "mediawiki" a nice solution to "collaborative editing" on a smartphone ? doe it take advantage of the device capabilities?

Regards.

83a• 13 years ago

what do you want to store? who's gonna use it? why not use a wiki?

if it's about collaborative working on a long text: perhaps plain text-files and a version control system like git is the way to go?

if you want to discuss about a medium-length text, you could use a etherpad.

http://etherpad.org/ - example: http://piratenpad.de/p/hackernews

anonymouz• 13 years ago

You might want to try to specify which problems, in your eyes, a wiki solves, and maybe also which ones are inadequately solved by a wiki but that you want to be solved.

Otherwise you're essentially asking "I want something like X, but not X", which will probably not lead to any paradigm shift as you seem to be looking for...

algorix2• 13 years ago

Nice thoughts! When I think about wiki, I think about team work. After read yours comments I could find (googling) a proprietary solution called Confluence[1]. Maybe it's what I'm looking for. Lets see...

[1] https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence

Ask HN: alternative solutions for wiki

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