Maintaining a Programmer Wiki [closed]

Answer 1

We house and inhouse team wiki. And there we put all the necessary information for each project we are developing:

• repositories
• addresses for virtual machines
• passwords
• project documentations
• project overview
• project status

and anything else we fill needs to be written on a project. And it is the most useful web application we are running (besides Mantis) . On more general pages we put a definition of every taxonomy we are using, general project guidelines, polices, coding and developing practices we use. It is there, it is simple and effective and I think every team should have one of those.

Answer 2

Wikipatterns is a website dedicated to documenting best wiki practices. They also describe anti-patterns and talk about ways to deal with them. I read their book and it was a great asset for me to get a wiki off the ground in a 150+ person organization.

Answer 3

• Introduction to the source base for new programmers
• General documentation (not the API documentation per-se, but more tutorial like things)
• Lists of staff / who's doing what and how to reach them
• Notes / resources / articles that explain concepts used in the software
• Documentation of the build process and the filesystem layout of the codebase

Other things I usually put up there are

• Planning / todo lists
• Information that is interesting for others to read
• Everything else that I feel should be shared

Answer 4

Come up with some kind of style guide, and teach others how to style stuff. When I was in charge of a corporate wiki, all of the other developers would just write crummy prose that was barely formatted, and looked terrible.

Keep away from things that require discussion. I tried shoehorn in a book review section, but it was too difficult to have others comment on things.

Examples of in house libraries are good. And/or "storyboards" walking a user through a process when MethodX is called.

Answer 5

What are some best practices your dev team uses for its internal wiki?

Make it look nice. I know it doesn't sound important, but if you spend a little time branding it pays off in terms of people actually using it. And uptake is key, or it will just wither and die.

What information is important to have on a dev wiki?

• General information about a Project, milestones, delivery dates etc.
• Summaries of design decisions/meetings. Important so that you don't re-visit the same areas time and time again.
• HowTo guides for general development of current projects (for example, how to develop a new Plugin)

If you were to go to the wiki for your dev team what information would you expect to see?

Project information, who is working on what etc. Design decisions. Also best practices and links to useful sites.

Is there some information that shouldn't go on the wiki even though it seems like a good idea?

Low-level task lists tend to fluctuate and not be kept up-to-date, and can be misleading. Also, critical communications between departments are better suited to e-mail, THEN the conversation can be copied to the wiki. It's too easy to ignore it otherwise!