BridgeArt.net Portal - interactive web for civil engineers (beta)

The simplicity and power of free and opensource DokuWiki is simply amazing. I have been using DokuWiki for some time to keep my personal files organized. It serves as a my diary, both professional and personal, notepad, task list, repository of useful information and much more. I have installed it in a protected directory on a webserver, so I can access it from anywhere with access to internet including home, school, and work. There is no database involved, so it can be easily backed up by merely copying a bunch of plain text files to a safe location.

Up to now, I have been using it only in a single user mode - the only user being myself. However, yesterday I upgraded to a new version 2006-11-06 and I quickly realized that DokuWiki can be easily deployed in a multiuser environment. I have struggled for a long time to clearly and persuasively demonstrate the benefits of wiki over email for certain types on in-house communication. After upgrading my DokuWiki and seeing its new capabilities, I finally got an idea how to make my point clear.

Certain type of information contained in email communication may have a longterm value not only for email sender and recipients but also for for others. This type of information should be stored in a wiki rather than be buried in email mailboxes. Why? Let's consider this example: Webdesign team of a large corporation, decided to use DokuWiki to keep documentation about the corporate website. The documentation would cover topics such as website goals, knowledgebase about technologies used to develop the the website, progress reports, backup schedule, directory structure description, etc.

Instead of resolving important and lasting issues via email, the webdesign team decided to discuss and archive these issues directly in the DokuWiki. To facilitate getting input or providing information, a special wiki page called "announcements" was created. Anyone who subscribes to this page via the DokuWiki subscribe button shown in the picture below, will receive a notification anytime this announcement page is changed.

 
Subscribe Changes DokuWiki button

The changes made to the announcements page would be only brief notifications merely pointing to other wiki pages where the core issues are discussed. What are the advantages of this approach?

• Contents gets categorized and organized in the wiki on the fly. Since email is now used only to send out notifications it does not need to be archived. The information is archived in the wiki.
• Powerful workflow tracking is is archived by the nature of wiki.
• The information is always readily available in a searchable wiki. Even if some emploeeys leave, the information stays. The same cannot be said about email.
• Each wiki page is always up to date and contains the latest information. No more wading through email inboxes.

 
Email overload versus Wiki (figure by Socialtext)

This simple example can be easily extended to other types of projects. DokuWiki is a great way to introduce the concept of wiki collaboration to corporations, where the resistance to change is sometimes incomprehensible. Once the wiki concept is embraced, it is much easier to introduce more advanced wiki engine. I have setup sample corporate dokuwiki that can be accessed at http://www.usewiki.net/dokuwiki/ .