Wiki software review

Administrivia
#1

Hi folks,

There was (and has been a few times) a conversation about the usefulness of our Wiki, the biggest issue of which seems to be that it can’t be searched.

Assuming you knew it existed already (if not, why not?), and/or have used it… can we gather some requirements/issues to make an informed decision as to whether we move it elsewhere?

Please lets start with requirements, not solutions :wink:

#2

Requirements:

  • Easy to use wysiwyg editor (to encourage non technical people to contribute and format)
  • Easy image insertion (drag and drop)
  • Nice way to structure pages and view that structure - i.e. sub pages, so you can have eg home->tools->laser cutter type structures.
  • Easy login.
  • Security groups, so you could have director related stuff in there only visible to directors.
  • Nicer urls to permalink to pages.
  • Works well (including editing) on mobile.
  • Simple page diff tool, with rollback.
  • Not blocked at work (I’m looking at you Google docs!)
  • (Nice to have?) Ability to have “discussions” below a page?
  • (Nice to have?) An API. Maybe the Telegram bot could respond to, say /machines, with a list of links to machine pages, or something…

I don’t really have too many issues with the GitHub wiki. It’s not amazing, but none of the other wikis I’ve used are either (mediawiki/confluence). Non searchability is a bit annoying though.

I think the biggest issue is getting people to contribute content and I’m not sure switching wiki software will necessarily improve that.

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