Random Moments

There is so much that I want to do here at CMS Report, but my time has been limited these past couple weeks.  Some things that have been going on in my world:

1. As a judge for Packt Publishing's Open Source CMS Awards, I gave the publishing company my vote on the "Most Promising" CMS.  I dedicated a couple weekends to get the job done and I plan to post my reviews after Packt announces the winners (October 28).
2. I made the decision to drop my reseller account for Dakota Hosting.  The number of clients I host are few and over the past two years I've only been breaking even.
3. My post on Dell's Inspiron Mini 12 netbook brought in quite a bit of traffic to the site.  It looks like I may be a couple weeks off in my prediction for when this new netbook will finally hit the market.
   
4. InfoWorld has an article that suggests skipping Vista for Windows 7 may not be such a great idea.  My opinion differs and I posted a couple comments (as BryanSD).
5. A couple weeks ago, Deane from Gadgetopia posted an article asking, "What Makes a Wiki?".  You can read my comments there, but since it is CMS related...I'll post an excerpt here so it doesn't get lost if I want to continue my train of thought at a later date.
   

   I finally got around to reading this post. Deane, you get no argument from me but I wanted to add a few thoughts of my own.

   We've used mediaWiki behind the firewall with some success. To be honest, I'm not in favor of the lack of WYSIWYG with strange wiki markup. I'm not in favor of creating the "instant links" created by contributors as it lacks some needed structure. I'm also not in favor of wiki-only applications as they don't offer the same growth in welcomed features as a full CMS. However...I think starting with a "wiki-only" application for many organizations is essential in developing a culture of collaboration.

   My workplace has an extreme culture of control with regards to policies, memos, and official documentation. While collaboration isn't a new term, for organizations such as the one I work for, collaboration is still relatively new to put in practice. Full featured CMS can be confusing to users with regards to where on the Website they can edit other people's work and where they cannot. When users doubt they should be editing another person's work...they usually won't edit the work.

   I do agree with Allan Thraen's comment/article that the difference between a Wiki and a CMS is psychological. However, I'll also argue that the difference is also cultural. If you have a CMS where traditionally you've placed formal controls on the content, then just adding wiki features to the CMS may not be enough to break the established control culture. In this case, you might want to consider adding a wiki-only site instead of integrating a wiki into a CMS.