Re: CMS vs. Wiki

Seth,
Thanks for your feedback!  Please see more below...

Seth Gottlieb wrote:
> Choosing a CMS is a lot more complicated than choosing a Wiki.  This is 
I've noticed.

> mainly because the CMS is broader than the Wiki market, there are more 
> products, and there is a diverse set of definitions of what is a CMS 
> is.  I highly recommend the CMS Report by CMS Watch.  There is a free 
> downloadable version that gives some information that you are looking 
> for but the whole report (I have heard) is excellent.
> 
> Bob Doyle's site CMS Review has some excellent free content.  In 
> particular, you should check out:  http://www.cmsreview.com/Steps/
Thanks!

> Many CMS (open source and proprietary) focus on managing content at the 
> page level.  Just managing data in a database might not be a good fit 
I'm finding that out, too.

> for what is classically defined as a CMS.  Recently, I have been talking 
> to multiple clients who initially call us in for a content management 
> project.  After digging deeper into their requirements, we learn that it 
> is more of a data management problem with some content management 
> aspects (particularly workflow and deployment).   Just something to 
> think about.  Let me know if you want to discuss further.
I think this should be a web application after all, maybe I can write 
something in PHP and store it in MySQL - any hints on where to go for 
templating tools?

BTW, great list!

> --Seth
> 
> 
> 
> Dierk Seeburg wrote:
> 
>> Thanks, Seth!
>> I was contemplating the collaborative aspect for our purposes and 
>> appreciate your pointers.  We need to manage a number of records in a 
>> database for which I would like a web interface.  Is there a place 
>> with information on how to choose a CMS like there is for Wikis at, 
>> e.g., http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ChoosingaWiki ?
>> Thanks again!
>> Die
>>
>> Seth Gottlieb wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Dierk,
>>>
>>> In general, Wiki's are more appropriate for collaborative content 
>>> management with little or no need for editorial control.  Web CMS are 
>>> better for situations where you want to have an editorial process 
>>> that controls what goes on the site.   Here are some questions that 
>>> might steer you to one or the other.
>>>
>>> Which is worse, having something wrong appear on the site (like a 
>>> typo or incorrect information) or discouraging/impeding someone from 
>>> publishing an idea or some information that has the potential to help 
>>> others?  If the goal is to harness the creativitiy and knowledge from 
>>> as many people as possible,  a Wiki might be the right tool.
>>>
>>> Is there any need for workflow?  Wiki's generally do not have 
>>> workflow or even an approval mechanism.  Once a user makes an edit, 
>>> it is live.
>>>
>>> Do you trust your users to manage the content?  Or, said another way, 
>>> are your users motivated to improving the quality of the resource?  
>>> If so, go Wiki.
>>>
>>> Is your organization engaged in a taxonomy initiative to organize 
>>> content?  If so, a traditional CMS model might be preferable because 
>>> you can delegate an authority to organize and tag content according 
>>> to the corporate taxonomy.  The organiziation of a Wiki is totally 
>>> organic.  People create pages, people notice redundencies, people 
>>> merge pages.  It is a chaotic process that eventually gravitates 
>>> towards order (or doesn't).
>>>
>>> Do you intend to reuse conent in an automated way?  Content in Wiki's 
>>> is totally unstructured and, therefore, difficult to reuse in other 
>>> applications.   Many web CMS have structured content (including 
>>> metadata) that allows assets to be used by different sites in 
>>> different ways.
>>>
>>> I realize that you can solve a lot of these problems with some simple 
>>> access control, but I believe it is best to choose a technology for 
>>> what it was designed for.
>>>
>>> So here are some examples of good Wiki's
>>> * Wikipedia is able to harness the knowledge of thousands of readers 
>>> with a common goal of sharing information.
>>> * Open Source Software documentation.   Most Apache projects have a 
>>> Wiki where project contributors can quickly and easily add 
>>> documentation about the project.  The ease of contribution is one 
>>> less excuse for a programmer to procrastinate documentation!
>>> * My company uses a Wiki for an internal knowledge base and also a 
>>> collaborative workspace on projects (however, we need to take the 
>>> text from deliverables and port them into professional looking 
>>> documents).
>>>
>>> Here are somethings that would be better served with a traditional CMS
>>> * Your corporate website.
>>> * A policy manual.  While I would not be worried about people 
>>> tampering with it because their is an audit history, someone might 
>>> with good intentions add information that he thought was correct and 
>>> temporarily mislead another reader.  Plus, you might want to 
>>> transform the online version into a print version and that might be 
>>> hard with a Wiki.
>>>
>>> Dierk Seeburg wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>> I'd be interested in people's opinion on when to use a CMS and when 
>>>> to use a Wiki?  For what tasks would you use or not use one and not 
>>>> the other?  What are advantages of one over the other?
>>>> Thanks a bunch!
-- 
Cheerio,
Dierk Seeburg, +1-602-953-4496, dierk_seeburg-E0T7EY2UX4gpIyhaTEd/[email protected]
Web Content Administrator, Choice Hotels International
http://www.choicehotels.com - http://www.choicecentral.com