[OT] advice on wikis and bulletin boards

[Bill Moran]

Andrew Gould <andrewgould at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Strategic planning will be starting soon at my new place of employment,
> and I'd like to setup a place on our intranet to facilitate discussions
> and planning prior to meetings to reduce meeting times and make
> meetings more productive.  This would be a new activity for this
> organization, so we'll start with just our own office.  User permissions
> will be needed for security.
> 
> I've used bulletin boards before (phpbb); but they don't seem to be
> well designed for group editing of documents.  I've noticed that wiki's
> have become very popular; but I'm not sure how well they facilitate
> discussions.
> 
> Does anyone have any advice or suggestions?

Please wrap your lines around 72 chars or so.

Wikis are good for group-developed documentation and similar.  We used
one extensively when we used a committee to rewrite the local LUG's
bylaws and it was very helpful.

I don't think Wikis are good for group discussion, however.  For that I
would fall back on a mailing list.  Use something like Mailman that has
archiving capability.  For that same committee work, we also had a
dedicated mailing list -- the two went hand in hand, and I don't think
the wiki would have been nearly as useful without the mailing list.

-Bill