Anyone for wiki?

[Former Member]

Having spent much time recently investigating wikis, and becoming fascinated with the concept, I have started wondering whether this wouldn't be the answer to much of the stress we have on SDN.

(Before I continue: Is there an SDN wiki? If so, forgive me for not knowing about it).

Wikis, having been around since the mid 1990s, represent a complete mindshift in the way we document and share our knowledge. Many companies use them internally to document everything from ideas to processes, from help to common problems and their solutions.

I see a wiki answering many of the questions and problems that have been posed recently in discussions in this forum and elsewhere; questions such as:

1. How can we take the collective knowledge of SDNers and put it in one place (like an FAQ), knowledge that is currently spread thinly over thousands upon thousands of threads in the forums?

2. How do we prevent users from asking the same questions over and over and people giving the same responses?

3. How do we deal with the problems/abuses that arise from the SDN points system?

Of course, there is some overlap with these questions. I believe a wiki could answer them very nicely, as well as many other question about how we share knowledge and expertise, including how we share ideas, and even assist in documenting where SAP's documentation is lacking.

I don't believe that there would be more effort involved on the part of SAP staff to monitor a wiki, the way they monitor and moderate SDN currently. The whole point is less control, and because everybody can edit (let's say for argument's sake editing limited to logged in SDN users), everybody can fix, and provided that the bulk of the community consists of users who want to help rather than hurt, a wiki can continue to grow healthily.

Having looked at wikis closely, the issue that I think most companies struggle with is the step of faith of giving up much of the control of the content to users. Yet despite the many objections people have come up with over the years, wikis have proven themselves to be successful, provided there is interest from the community.

I am sure that Mark et al. have considered using a wiki for SDN. I don't see one yet, but I believe it's worth giving a whole lot more thought.

[former_member184494]

Mark,

I did some web search ( Google... nothing great )

looks like there was or there is a wiki for TechEd and nothing else..

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/teched05/index.cgi?SAP_TechEd_Bangalore

however there is a wiki maintained by ittoolbox which I assume is outside the realm of SDN. Mark .. does SDn have anything on the cards on this ? like if for teched , why not for SDN itself ?

Arun

Message was edited by: Arun Varadarajan