In need of a collaborative writing tool
I just set up a private wiki for a little university project for collaborative text editing (i opted for pmwiki). After fiddling around with it for a while, a few things come to mind:
- The wiki writing process is rather product oriented, not process-oriented, e.g. it leaves little room for annotation, interaction or discussion between collaborators.
- Subethaedit seems much more spontaneous and process-oriented (if only it were available for platforms other than mac os x). However i somewhat doubt the final outcome of a document would be as polished as a wiki-product.
- The most important difference between these two forms of collaborative writing is that wikis are highly asynchronous in nature. Many wiki systems lock pages while they’re edited by someone else. Subethaedit on the other hand is rather synchronous in usage. Though i believe it can be used to some degree for asynchronous editing, i think it’s not intended nor tailored towards this kind of editing. For the project i’m using this wiki for, asynchronous collaboration is most likely of greater importance, so a wiki isn’t a bad fit. However synchronous editing might be beneficial at some point nonetheless.
These points might only be true for pmwiki and subethaedit though. Any suggestions for something that gives you the best of both worlds?
Hi there, I’m looking for a wiki to recomend to a non-profit to use for discussion between meetings and think I favor PmWiki. I just wrote a little review on my blog of its features, as well as Mediawiki, UseModwiki and MoinMoin. If you are interested in checking it out, any feedback or your thoughts on Pm, etc. would be much appreciated. Synchronous editing is less of an issue, as it’s a small org. But I’d love to get some thoughts from people with experience before implementation.
Comment by Marshall on Mar. 25th, 2005, at 23:21 #