Forum OpenACS Development: Response to How about an OpenACS wiki?

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Posted by Michael Feldstein on
I suppose I can see a use for a tool with the following
characteristics:

-User-editable (and createable) pages

-Versioning, so you can undo damage

-The ability to restrict editing for certain users or groups

The problem with wikki is as much social as it is technological.
You can't just stick a wikki about any old topic out on the Internet
and expect all users to (a) not do anything destructive and (b)
know how to cooperate productively. Permissions exist to
enforce social behaviors and procedures. It's fine to say, "We
don't need our software to do that for us," but you'd better be sure
that's true.

I see a wikki-like tool as being most useful as groupware, in the
spirit of persistent whiteboarding. I'm not sure whether it would
be all that helpful in documentation development; that's really a
function of the way people in the community decide to use it.