Epiphany

I first encountered a Wiki several years ago (the Portland Pattern Repository Wiki), but did not understand it's significance. About 6 months ago a co-worker installed a TWiki for our development team. It again took some time for me to "get it." I wasn't alone as some of my other programmer friends had the same mental blocks. One day it just sunk in, and seemed like the greatest thing since sliced-bread. I wanted everything to be Wiki-fied. The Wiki removed the biggest barrier to creating new content... the drudgery of creating new files/layout/uploading/etc.

Peanut Butter is to Chocolate as Hobby Websites are to the Wiki

I have a few Alfa Romeos, and I'm a member of the Alfa Digest (a mailing list for Alfa Enthusiasts.) The same questions come up year after year, and people eventually get tired of answering them. Searching the archives is handy, but hardly the answer. Enter the Wiki...

The Alfa Wiki

The Alfa Wiki has been running for a month. It gets about 100 unique visitors per day and is slowly becoming one of the better Alfa Romeo resources on the web. Only a few people have been brave enough to edit. It has been difficult overcoming the idea of "ownership" of a particular page. People seem to be reluctant to edit pages someone else has authored. Even so the barrier to adding content is so low, that I don't mind producing the bulk of the content (largely distilled from the Alfa Digest.) I've added a small plugin that makes integration between the Alfa Photo Gallery and the Alfa Wiki easier. I am also using a modified TigerSkin plug-in, which (IMHO) looks very slick, while being very easy to read.

Everything Wiki

Even my wife is now using the Wiki... She picked it up very quickly, and has been using it for her personal web pages. She asked "Why aren't Wikis everywhere? This is the first time I heard of one." She's right, they should be everywhere. Thanks to Les Orchard I have even integrated Mark's Blog with my Wiki, allowing me to use the syntax, and even link to Wiki topics.

-- MarkDenovich - 20 Feb 2003