Wiki engine

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Revision as of 22:14, 6 September 2019 by Gary (talk | contribs) (→‎Influence on enterprise systems)
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Any wiki engine (hereinafter, the Engine) is software that is designed to support creation, collaborative editing, storage, and usage of hyper-linked documents. The editing usually occurs through a web browser. The Engine that is ready to be installed is called wiki software; the Engine that is installed, usually on one or more application servers, is called a wiki application.


Usage

Collaboration tool

Main wikipage: Document collaboration
Theoretically, any collaborative development of documents can occur in four ways:
# Collaborative document development Tools Advantages Disadvantages
1 Exchange of ideas and compiling a unified document Forums, brainstorming sessions, interpersonal communications such as emails Tools are commonly known and can be used by pretty much anyone Compiling a unified document can be very challenging; usually, it needs to be collaborated beyond its ideas exchange
2 Exchange of documents under development Systems to pass documents physically or as email attachments If more than two collaborate, identifying the last revisions can be challenging.
3 Collaborative work on the same document without tracking of its revisions. Web-based office suites such as Google Docs; document storage facilities such as Google Drive; workflow applications; content management systems Although minimal skills are required to utilize the tools, usually, everyone can obtain those skills The main drawback arises if the history of revisions is needed
4 Collaborative work on the same document with tracking of its revisions. The Engines Under some circumstances, too much information can be difficult to handle The tools require skills beyond minimal

Version control

All the most popular Engines include some version control systems (VCSes) in one of two ways:
  1. MediaWiki, Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware, Wiki.js, XWiki, etc. track revisions using their database management systems (DBMSes).
  2. Gitit and Ikiwiki use their VCSes to store files without any standalone database. A default version of PmWiki features no database as well, but can utilize some database through some plugins.

Areas of applications

Essentially, all the Engines can fall into one or more categories:
  • Publicly-open wikis such as MediaWiki and PmWiki, which are fully visible to any user of the World Wide Web and feature potentially large communities of readers, content contributors, and editors.
  • Enterprise wikis, which feature either:
    1. Fully-private documents for data management utilized by organizations or private teams. Confluence and the wiki component of Redmine belong to this type of the Engines.
    2. Some combination of private and publicly-open documents particularly practiced by Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware and Liferay. Often, private documents are used to develop publicly-open ones.
  • Personal wikis such as TiddlyWiki, which are designed to be used by a single person to manage notes and usually be run on a personal device such as a desktop computer or mobile phone.

Publicly-open wikis

Publicly-open wikis such as MediaWiki and PmWiki which are fully visible to any user of the World Wide Web and feature potentially large communities of readers, content contributors, and editors.

Features of open wikis

Since open wikis tend to attract large communities of content contributors and editors, they usually allow for open registration, which arises needs to combat spam. Several levels of user permissions are usually set up in order to manually manage users and the content, especially the one in dispute. Some merit basis is commonly used to promote users to upper levels.

Open-wiki trends

MediaWiki is the most popular open-wiki Engine; it features a resilient back-end, but its front-end appearance, especially limited mobile-friendliness, and text editor are lagging behind such industry standards such established by WordPress, for instance. Several projects such as BlueSpice MediaWiki, PmWiki, and Wiki.js aim to address those weaknesses of MediaWiki.

Comparison of open wikis

Comparison of open wikis
Category Features Gitit Ikiwiki MediaWiki PmWiki Wiki.js
Legal properties Ownership OSS OSS OSS OSS OSS
Developer John MacFarlane Joey Hess Magnus Manske, Lee Daniel Crocker Patrick Michaud Nicolas Giard
License GPL GPLv2 GPLv2 GPL Affero
Latest release 0.12.3.1 3.20190228 1.33.0 2.2.118 1.0.117
History 2019/01/01 2019/02/28 2019/07/02 2019/08/28 2019/01/22
Introduction 2008 2006 2002 2002 2017
OS Windows No Yes Cross-platform Cross-platform Cross-platform
macOS No Yes
Linux UNIX-like No
BSD No
Unix No
Core Encoding UTF-8 Unknown UTF-8 ISO8859-1, UTF-8 UTF-8
Multilingual support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Programming language Haskell Perl PHP PHP JavaScript
Data backend Git, Darcs, Mercurial VCS MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL Flat-file, SQLite (via plug-in) Node.js, MongoDB, Git
Category Features Gitit Ikiwiki MediaWiki PmWiki Wiki.js

Enterprise wikis

Enterprise wikis are designed to be used in organizations, usually, as (a) an internal knowledge base and/or (b) internal tool to develop textual documents, particularly external webpages. According to Wikipedia,

Among the many companies and government organizations that use wikis internally are Adobe Systems, Amazon.com, Intel, Microsoft, and the United States intelligence community.

Influence on enterprise systems

Enterprise wikis may add to or replace centrally-managed data management systems, including:
  • Content management systems. More contributors and editors allow for more rapid and cheap management of the enterprise content in comparison with a centrally controlled knowledge repository.
  • Document management systems.
  • Project management systems.
  • Customer relationship management systems.
  • Enterprise resource planning systems.
  • Email software. Enterprise wikis may greatly reduce email overload. Wikis allow all relevant information to be shared by people working on a given project. Conversely, only the wiki users interested in a given project need look at its associated wiki pages, in contrast to high-traffic mailing lists which may burden subscribers with many messages, regardless of their relevance. It is also very useful for the project manager to have all the communication stored in one place, which allows them to link the responsibility for every action taken to a particular team member.

Features of enterprise wikis

Features of enterprise wikis are as wide as the wikis' applications. :Since open wikis tend to attract large communities of content contributors and editors, they usually allow for open registration, which arises needs to combat spam. Several levels of user permissions are usually set up in order to manually manage users and the content, especially the one in dispute. Some merit basis is commonly used to promote users to upper levels.

Features of enterprise wikis include: 

   Entering information into quick and easy-to-create pages, including hyperlinks to other corporate information systems like people directories, CMS, applications, and thus to facilitate the buildup of useful knowledge bases.
   Organizes information. Wikis help users structure information into discoverable and searchable categories. These may arise from users in a bottom-up way. Users can create lists, tables, timelines and other ways of expressing order.
   Builds consensus. Wikis allow structuring the expression of views, on a topic being considered by authors, on the same page. This feature is very useful when writing documentation, preparing presentations, when author opinions differ, and so on.
   Access levels by rights and roles. Users can be denied access to view and/or edit given pages, depending upon their department or role within the organization.
   Knowledge management with comprehensive searches. This includes document management, project management, and knowledge repositories useful during times of employee turnover or retirement.

Comparison of enterprise wikis

Comparison of enterprise wikis
Category Features BlueSpice Confluence Redmine Tiki XWiki
Legal properties Ownership OSS Atlassian OSS OSS OSS
Developer Hallo Welt! GmbH Jean-Philippe Lang Luis Argerich Ludovic Dubost
License GPLv3 Proprietary GPLv2 LGPL LGPL
Latest release 3.0.1 6.15.6 4.0.4 19.1 11.7
History 2019/01/17 2019/06/24 2019/6/10 2019/02/14 2019/08/27
Introduction 2011 2004 2006 2002 2004
OS Windows No Yes Cross-platform Cross-platform Cross-platform
macOS No Yes
Linux UNIX-like No
BSD No
Unix No
Core Encoding UTF-8 UTF-8 Unknown UTF-8 UTF-8
Multilingual support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Programming language PHP Java, Java EE Ruby PHP Java
Data backend MariaDB DB2, MS SQL Server, MariaDB, Oracle, PostgreSQL Cross-database MariaDB PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, Apache Derby, HSQLDB
Category Features BlueSpice Confluence Redmine Tiki XWiki
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