[lug] Wiki server suggestions for small organization

[Davide Del Vento]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 4:43 PM Jed S. Baer <blug at jbaer.cotse.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 15:45:15 -0700
> Davide Del Vento wrote:
>
> > and if you are not very well
> > organized you end up like in a messed up pile of paper in a file cabinet
>
> That's going to be true about any platform. e.g. nothing in a wiki enforces
> having people create new pages in the proper place in the hierarchy.
> Somebody will always need to ride herd on the thing, sometimes moving
> things around to where they need to be.
>

While that is true, at NCAR we use both Atlassian wiki and Google docs
(both for academics), so let me share my experience with them. Both are
"not sorted" (to be kind :-) by the people who create the pile of documents
(ehm, to use an euphemism).

Atlassian's wiki creates index pages, and Google creates a mess of
unstructured directories.
Finding stuff in the wiki is possible in the index pages, with some
determination. Finding stuff in Google Drive in the folders is impossible
once you reach a not-so-high number of documents.

Wiki search is basically useless, whereas Google search just sucks (much
more than Linux does, to cite your signature). You may find stuff with
Google search only if you have the right search terms, which you never do
because in an organization like ours (and I assume the same with Vince's)
all the documents contain the same keywords because they are all on the
same subject.

So with Atlassian wiki, you can find your stuff with some determination
(=if you really need them and have/find the time to search in the index
files).
With Google, you will NEVER find anything, unless somebody is kind enough
to send you the link (provided they have it), or there is a dedicated
person whose only job is to sort stuff as it is created. FWIW, this is the
direction we are headed at NCAR, but I doubt that it will work in a
volunteer-based org, since it's extremely tedious and time consuming, and
only a boss saying "this is your duty or you're fired" could convince a
person to do this sorting.

Of course if the number of total documents is small, none of this is a
problem, but if the number was small probably Vince would not have asked
the question in the first place?
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