RE: CMS vs. Wiki

[email protected] wrote:
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 09:15:57 +0100
> From: "Brice Dunwoodie" <bdunwood-/[email protected]>
> Subject: RE: [CMS] CMS vs. Wiki
> To: <[email protected]>
> Message-ID: <200502030816.j138GI2O009938-fruN6kYK4IGHE5RDhafnnkFrd++jNZG9AL8bYrjMMd8@public.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"
> 
> 
> 
>>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project collaboration and not for publication.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.
And we do have another project which with the help of all you people's 
insight I will move to get implemented in a Wiki.

>>>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.
Can this not be handled using templating, CSS, and such?
The other part that intrigued me about MediaWiki was the multi-lingual 
and inter-lingual capabilities out of the box that MediaWiki comes with.

>>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.
Well put.

> -Brice