Sharepoint Wikis

Question

Ok, I\'ve seen a few posts that mention a few other posts about not using SP wikis because they suck.

Since we are looking at doing our wiki in SP, I n

Answer 1

My company rolled out sharepoint recently, and I have to say my user experience was Very Bad. And I'm not just saying I was apprehensive to using it: I went in with an open mind and tried it, and many things just felt like they didn't really work right.

The reasons Luke mentioned more or less cover it.

Why wouldn't you consider using something else like Screwturn Wiki which Jeff donated to a short while ago? I haven't used Screwturn myself, but it is free and open source, and may be a faster lightweight solution for what you need.

Answer 2

Here are some caveats I came across that will vanish if you use a wiki other than Sharepoint.

Sharepoint lets you create tons of separate wikis, but I'd recommend having one big wiki for everything. My company made a bunch of little wikis for each project/feature, but only admins can create the individual wikis, so if I want to write about something that isn't doesn't match one of the predefined categories, I have to find a manager to create the wiki first.

Secondly, if you use Sharepoint make sure everyone on your staff only uses IE, since Firefox doesn't support the WYSIWIG editor. This is a good thing for most wikis, but makes collaborating difficult in Sharepoint. Imagine editing auto-generated HTML in a tiny little box all day.

Third, try to write up your project documentation in the wiki and resist the temptation to upload Word docs to the Sharepoint library. No point in writing up all your docs twice and watching things get more and more out of sync.

Finally, image support in Sharepoint wikis is terrible. You have to add a file to a document library somewhere and type in the URL. My images were forever getting deleted because they don't seem to make much sense out of context.

Answer 3

I've played very briefly with SharePoint Wiki Plus. It's a third-party extension that adds features to the SharePoint Wiki. For serious wiki users then you probably need something more than the SharePoint provided Wiki - either via an extension or a dedicated Wiki product.

Answer 4

I would also temper the ratings of the OOB wiki and its lack of functionality with the technical level of the authors here.

I agree that the SP wiki might qualify in name only - certainly when compared to some more robust offerings - but remember as an admin - your primary success is determined by end user adoption. In short - for every feature that a wiki like Confluence adds, it also adds user education, syntax, etc.

While I would love SP wiki to have more "wiki-like" - there is a certain, undescribable satisfaction you can take when your CIO adds an entry in the company wiki - or you are recognized by a group of administrative assistants who find the new wiki "revolutionary".

In short - the built in functionality may be lacking to the jaded eyes of us tech professionals, but to the technologically naive, its pretty easy to train on, and can expose them to a technology they may have heard of but could never (before this) understand or imagine using.

Answer 5

Before the rant, here is my overall experience with SharePoint as a wiki.

It is a poorly implemented feature that failed becouse there was a fundemental lack of investigation into what current wiki environments provide. That is why it failed in it's editor and why it misses on points like: tagging, history comparison, and poorly generated html code.

You need to skip it and get something else that does the job better and link to it from SharePoint.

Having production experience with both products, I'd recommend ScrewTurn over SharePoint.

see edit history for rant