Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
A team-based web development project is always a complex endeavor. It involves different developers with varying levels of experience, different fields of expertise, milestones to accomplish and a timeline to achieve.
To facilitate the sharing of information, it’s not always enough to use project management tools like Asana or Jira. Sometimes, a wiki may be needed to help distribute knowledge and best practices to everyone working on the project.
In this guide, we discuss the practicality of using wiki tools for information sharing among web devs.
What is a Wiki?
A wiki is a program that enables users to collaborate in the creation and population of the content for a website. The word comes from the “wikiwiki,” which is Hawaiian for “fast.” In other words, a wiki is an app that allows for crowdsourced content to create pages of information.
In addition to wiki pages, Web 2.0 tools allow users to connect and share information via rich media such as RSS, OpenSocial and OpenID. Another use for wiki tools is to share creative content such as photography and design concepts. A very simple way of sharing web pages on the wiki is to add a share icon at the top of the page. Simply add the share icon to a wiki page.
The Benefits of Wikis
Wikis bring a number of benefits to web dev teams, such as:
Knowledge Sharing
Since people working on the project have different levels of expertise and experience, the wiki allows subject matter experts to contribute information based on their specialization. This valuable knowledge can be accessed by others who need such information and dispels the formation of “information silos” that usually impede teams working in isolation from each other.
Searchable
The information stored in a wiki is categorized and organized in hierarchical and logical structures. It allows users to easily search for information based on topic, field or category, and learn what they need in an instant. This improves productivity and minimizes the need to chase other colleagues down in the search for data.
Single Source of Truth
By acting as a central repository of information, all data gets vetted before making it into the wiki. This makes the stored information verified and accurate and the wiki acts as the single source of truth for the whole team.
Easy Updates
The wiki allows contributors to update information easily and conveniently. As such, all references are up-to-date–a critical factor for any web dev project.
Wikis and Web Development
Wikis have the potential to make it easier to share knowledge with stakeholders as well as spread the expertise of a motivated development team, leading to better management and accountability.
Many wikis are publicly funded in different ways. For instance, several open source wikis exist, such as BikiWiki, ObjectiveWiki, GrowWiki and PDFLabs wiki, but we can see a few web-based initiatives in this space as well. These include Virgil Technology wiki and KnowledgeVerify.
Microsoft’s SharePoint platform is arguably one of the best solutions for online collaboration on web-based projects. Because SharePoint is integrated with almost all major applications (Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), users can create shared webpages based on SharePoint site templates and share these with their colleagues. While it’s true that SharePoint cannot solve all the problems related to information sharing and preservation, it provides a great starting point for finding common ground on project development.
The Advantage of Wikis Over Other Collaborative Tools
While project management tools usually incorporate collaborative functions, they are not as full-featured as a wiki is when it comes to knowledge sharing. The wiki is notable for having the following features that other tools may lack:
Search functionality: Wikis have full-featured search capabilities to aid in the search for information. No need to drill down tree structures and categorical hierarchies.
Comments: Adding comments to a page is an efficient and fast way to contribute and help others.
Content creation: You can write wiki articles using any text editor, or you can write it using the wiki syntax—it largely depends on the platform. The wiki syntax is quite similar to the HTML format. One thing that makes wikis useful is that when you share a wiki page, everyone can see the changes as they are made. So sharing works through a web link instead of having to publish to a file.
The wiki markup is a sequence of tags that represent the structure of a page. There are two main types of wikitext; the wiki syntax and the HTML syntax. The wiki syntax comes from Wikipedia, which is a popular wiki. Both are immediately available to devs, making content creation and editing easier.
Access control: Since wikis can change based on edits and the number of links get added to the pages, they use an access control and version management system.
With its growing array of software options and constant framework decisions, the world of web development always needs quick, organized patches of information. Rapid creation and publishing options mean that, for an almost 20-year-old technology, wikis can still be a valuable tool for web devs today.
