[OT] advice on wikis and bulletin boards

[bobmc]

Andrew Gould 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?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrew L. Gould
>   
I installed Apache and http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/wiki on FreeBSD.
You have to install it in cgi-bin, create group www, and look at httpd.conf
to see where files should be.  I also used it to create a website....
http://www.bobmc.net/cgi-bin/Goalie.pl/WikiVerse

There are tons of wikis available. The most famous is MediaWiki for
Wikipedia.  But oddmuse is only one Perl script that works anywhere.

MoinMoin has a nice balance between eyecandy and ease of use. You see it
on some open-source sites. I also like DokuWiki

Since it is so easy to create wiki pages, the challenge is to prevent a
spaghetti-ball forming. Read all about it starting at
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors where it all started
Also, a wiki is social software which some people are shy about using.
Setting one up is like boiling a frog,  you have to do it slowly.

For minutes of meetings you can setup a mailing list like this one but
in notification mode.

For documentation, several dedicated wikis can be setup. Think about
a page naming scheme that is consistent for your purpose.

Cheers,
-BobMc-