Wiki--the questions to ask

I received a lot of help as a result of my How to Choose Wiki Software post on January 24.

My best sources for what questions to ask came from these sites:

• The Choosing Wiki Software page of Meredith Farkas' Wiki Way presentation


• The article, Which Open Source Wiki Works For You?, by Shlomi Fish


• Two blog posts (some of which I received first by email in response to my query--thanks Dave!) and comments on The Industrial Librarian, Wiki Woes and Wiki Woes Part 2


• ...and a couple of personal email responses (librarians are so helpful)

• What is the cost?


• What level of support do we get?


• Do we want to use Open Source and what does that imply about cost and support?


• How are security issues handled including authentication, authorization, and spam prevention?


• Do we need to use wiki software that will feel familiar to users (that is, MediaWiki, which underlies Wikipedia)?


• What features do we want? Any of these?




• version control


• easy syntax / WYSIWIG editor


• talk or discussion pages


• RSS


• ability to customize the look


• availability of third party extensions


• ability to add images to pages




• Do we want the wiki hosted remotely or locally?


• If we want it hosted remotely, where? (see the list of Wiki Farms on Wikipedia for some possibilities)


• If we host it locally,...




• What software environment including programming languages, databases, and operating system do we need?


• How easy is it to install the wiki software?


• Is it possible to start on a sandbox server and have easy transfer to a public server?

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