Newsgroup vs. Wiki Collaboration
There are pros and cons for newsgroups and Wiki systems. Let me try; feel free to add directly to this list or to challenge it. We can learn from these lessons and improve TWiki accordingly.
- Newsgroup Pluses
- Simple to use once setup.
- Looks and feels like e-mail.
- Messages are threaded.
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- Newsgroup Minuses
- Can't cross-link postings. Actually you can do that with most clients by a drag & drop operation, but most people don't know / don't bother.
- Can't change a posting once sent. Many times it makes sense to fix some existing text after a topic has been discussed / clarified.
- Each posting is a seperate message, you need to click-click-click through the messages to get the big picture.
- Users rarly change the subject, so all the treaded messages tend to be Re: Something over and over again. You have to click on each message to see if there is something that interests you.
- The discussion often wanters to different topics, so the subject does not reflect the message.
- Content usually expires after some time (though it can be configured to never forget)
- Only text based, HTML messages are not used and usually not welcomed.
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- Wiki System Pluses
- All relevant content is on one page, you only need to scroll, no click-click-click operation to read a topic.
- Good context of content. This is because WikiWords foster cross-linking of topics.
- A discussion that wanders off-topic usually results in a new page that is linked from the old one.
- Fixing existing text is possible and encourraged.
- Rich text that include graphics is possible (I don't mean the M$ stuff, what I mean is bold, italic and so on).
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- Wiki System Minuses
- First learning step, user needs to grasp that linking is based on WikiTopics.
- Need to edit the page to add content, would be more intuitive to add text to an existing paragraph.
- No automatic signature / date when adding content to an existing topic.
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PeterThoeny - 26 Jan 2001
Would an
AddToTopic feature make a wiki more newsgroup-like?
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KristopherJohnson - 12 Apr 2001
A bit late, but see
CommentPlugin for an implementation of
AddToTopic.
Also, I created a
NewsGroups page before realising this page existed... Your set of pro's and con's is much better!
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RichardDonkin - 14 Feb 2002