Gergely,
Firstly Michael's response was related to wiki's in general and not
to wiki's in corporation. So my example was going to show that at least in
some cases it works fine and for that matter cannot be considered as "myth".
Secondly denying completely fun, professionalism and loyalty to
organization as existing factors at workplace is also something very
arguable. Furthermore managing wiki pages can be driven by completely
selfish reasons like saving time answering phone for example.
Your critical-mass-assumption is something I also cannot agree on.
In my opinion critical mass for wiki purposes is just equal to number of
people in organization. If there is only one, then one it would be. I would
also say that there is a reverse critical mass which means that if there are
less people participating in wikis than working in organization than there
is a critical point after which wiki will loose its value.
Thanks
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Gergely Buday
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 11:17 PM
To: Boris Ouretskey
Cc: Michael Kцlling; discuss@ppig.org
Subject: Re: PPIG discuss: Documentation for large systems
Michael wrote:
> 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.
for what Boris replied:
> You are welcome to visit www.wikipedia.org and convince yourself that is
far
> away from being myth.
Sorry to say, Boris, but your example is mistaken. Wikipedia has
millions of editors, and they do it for fun. A normal developer, i.e.
who is not forced to write documentation, rarely writes it for fun.
She writes code instead. And a software project rarely excess the
hundreds in person, so there is no critical mass for the documentation
process to be self-sustaining.
Should there be a responsible project manager, she puts resources for
writing the documentation. If this is the case, it can be wiki, which
does have advantages over word documents.
- Gergely
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