RE: CMS vs. Wiki

> In my own experience, Wiki systems are better suited for 
> project collaboration and not for publication.
> 
> For example, software development projects find them 
> extremely useful
 
Yes, Wiki's are excellent for collaborative, multi-faceted documentation.
We've switched over to using them for all of our consulting project
documentation. They've been a been a great fit for this.

> > I'd be interested in people's opinion on when to use a CMS 
> > and when to use a Wiki?  

I think in general taking a close look at Wikipedia and reading some of the
thoughts around Categories is quite educational. The main struggle is with
usability and info architecture.

>From the site: 
===
Categories form a graph, not a tree
The software feature does not force a strict hierarchy or tree of
categories, but allows multiple categorization schemes to co-exist
simultaneously. 

Because each article can appear in more than one category, and each category
can appear in more than one parent category, the categories do not form a
tree structure, but a more general directed graph. It is even possible to
construct loops in the category graph, but this is seldom a good idea.
===

..most websites are more of a tree than a graph. Wikis tend to be the
opposite. Regardless of wikiword based page names (many CMS used GUIDs or
other non-meaningful page Ids), one can overlay a hierarchical nav/info
structure by massaging the UI. Though at some point, depending on the
project, this can start feeling forced and can become totally impractical. 

It would seem then, that the decision of CMS vs Wiki -- if not already made
based on other requirements such as security, workflow, content lifecycles,
asset mgmnt, integration, content reuse, authentication, etc, etc -- can
probably be made based upon the question of whether the information
consumers, the information producers, and the data itself, require more or
less structure (tree vs graph). The greater the structural needs, the more
likely a CMS is the right choice.

-Brice

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