I have to agree with you that wiki methodology adoption depends heavily on companies' (organization) culture, but so is anything else.
Though the question of "How to document a large system" - is too general to answer , I still see wikis as very powerful method to accumulate and maintain knowledge in any large dynamic organization. I am currently working for company which quite successfully maintains the wiki pages at intranet site. -----Original Message----- From: Clendon Gibson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 10:10 PM To: Boris Ouretskey Subject: Re: PPIG discuss: Documentation for large systems Wikipedia and indeed other wikis are successful and useful, but the most successful ones are voluntary. Wikipedia is no exception to this. People are creating Wikipedia articles for there amusement or entertainment. In a development environment the motivation is different. It is very likely that the Wiki will be neglected because the knowledgeable have 'real' work to do. This reminds me of the discussion we had several months ago about using different development methods for open source projects vs. commercial projects. The use of a wiki as a documentation solution has to fit the culture of the users or developers. ----- Original Message ---- From: Boris Ouretskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Michael Kцlling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; discuss@ppig.org Sent: Tuesday, November 6, 2007 1:25:31 PM Subject: RE: PPIG discuss: Documentation for large systems You are welcome to visit www.wikipedia.org and convince yourself that is far away from being myth. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Kцlling Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 9:16 PM To: discuss@ppig.org Subject: Re: PPIG discuss: Documentation for large systems On 6 Nov 2007, at 18:53, Boris Ouretskey wrote: > Anyway to document large system it is obligatory to use wiki pages > (and a lot of time of cause) and give all the company an opportunity > to participate in the process. Wiki? Obligatory?? I don't believe in wikis at all. I know there is (still) a lot of hype around them, but I think it is a complete myth that they work. There is somehow the wishful thinking that the documents (documentation, in this case) write themselves. The hive-mind will fix it. "The community" (or "all the company") will write it. The result, much more often than not in my experience, is a document that nobody takes responsibility for, that has very weak overall structure, and random level of detail over various parts. No guarantee that important information is represented appropriately at all. I'd like to know who to kick if the document sucks. Michael ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
