Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter August/September 2007

June 2007 Meeting -- Structured Wikis for Collaboration and Content Management
Presented by Phil Gochenour and reviewed by Joshua Berman

Wikis -- the cute and exotic word that has changed the way people look up information. They have made editing less intimidating to millions of users, including this article's author. However, ease of use doesn't always simplify tasks such as content reuse and single-sourcing. This gap was bridged at the San Francisco Chapter STC's June meeting, where CNET technical writer Phil Gochenour introduced us to TWiki, a structured Wiki that uses plug-ins and variables to make content management more efficient.

TWiki's Beginnings

TWiki (an acronym for "tweaking" a Wiki) was created in 1999 for Take Five Software and was originally used as its Intranet tool mainly for bug-tracking to resolve customer issues. It would be geared as an enterprise-level application, and today it is used by companies such as SAP, Motorola, and British Telecom (more information available at twiki.org). Large firms, of course, need extensive databases for their information. The database structures can require many queries to obtain certain files, thus slowing down the process. TWiki, however, stores its files in directory form, or, as Phil refers to them, "Webs." It's simply a matter of naming the file, then entering the file name to retrieve the documents.

Main Types of Wikis

TWiki features two types of Wikis:

• Structured -- The metadata is created through different forms and is retrieved by search strings using standard expressions for TWiki's markup language. For instance, to make an expression display in bold font, enter the expression "*=Bold" after the topic.
   
• Application -- Users are able to access hundreds of different plug-ins (spreadsheets, TOCs, calendars, etc.) to build applications for virtually any situation. No programming experience is necessary to create application Wikis. In addition, the side, top, and bottom bars of a page are fully customizable to place the applications.

More Ways to "TWeak"

Other TWiki features include a notification system that e-mails users when the site changes, the creation of plug-ins in any language with the help of wrappers, and "soft security," which allows any user to make changes while leaving an audited trail consisting of user, current version, and revision date. One can also see the different revisions by clicking each topic footer. One more thing…it's absolutely FREE to use.

From Developer-centric to User-centric

Of course, even the most user-friendly Wikis have their disadvantages. Although the numerous plug-ins indeed assist users, there are just too many applications. With over 100,000 downloads, clones, and Webs, Phil sometimes refers to TWiki as "a giant toolbox." Most daunting of all, however, is that the source code was written primarily for UNIX developers. CNET addresses these concerns by offering "TWiki 101," an onsite class held quarterly. Students use CNET's network portal, which through the Google search mechanism has a comprehensive listing of both service areas and service providers. With additional help coming from dedicated user groups and e-mail lists, Phil Gochenour and CNET have shown TWiki to further simplify content reuse and single-sourcing.

Joshua Berman is the Assistant Editor for the San Francisco Chapter STC and the Secretary of the Berkeley Chapter STC.

| Newsletter Front Page | Newsletter Home | SF Chapter Contacts | SF Chapter Home Page | STC Home Page |