Re: WIKI to produce customer documentation

Subject: Re: WIKI to produce customer documentation
From: David Neeley <dbneeley -at- oddpost -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 12:39:06 -0800 (PST)


A wiki might be possiblek in this context; however, it would take continuous monitoring by someone to eliminate the "edits" that are misleading or inaccurate...and what happens to the material in the interim?

It could be that someone in Cheryl's company has seen this tool on the Web somewhere and became excited about its possibilities. However, if your product can be misused, the material which "appears" from the clueless may open your company to liability for innocent misuse of the product following the contents of the wiki at any given time.

It should be relatively easy, however, to produce a modified HTML site with the present information on it but with customer message-entry fields on each page. That way, you could have a reasonable degree of interactivity and fast feedback without having customers able to directly modify the primary information.

In addition, each section of the document could be allocated to one or more individuals, who would receive the messages as email from the relevant portions of your help website.

If I were to implement such a system, I would probably host it on a Zope site or comparable, with the built-in content management capabilities in place. That would also allow you to easily roll out a discussion group for users that would allow them to compare notes and get even more interaction with the documentation people and the developers when and as necessary.

David

-----Original Message from Steven Jong <SteveFJong -at- comcast -dot- net>-----

The company that Cheryl Webber <CWebber -at- seagull -dot- nl> works at is
thinking of using a WIKI methodology for documentation. Disclaimer: I
haven't worked with WIKI, so it sounds fascinating. I'm sure we'd all
like to hear how it goes...

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