Woke up to a war

I turned on the computer today and an instant message popped up to tell me I was the center of a war.
Now, my mother likes to see my name in print, but this is a little silly. We make decisions to switch vendors all the time with no fanfare. Those deals are hundreds of thousands of dollars and nary a peep.
We make a change where the cost is less than I spend on soda pop for the office and it’s a war. I don’t think so.
The point isn’t what software we are using, but can we get people to use wikis at work? I tell ya folks, it ain’t easy to wean people off of email…

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11 thoughts on “Woke up to a war”

  2. I confess… I’m supposed to be wiki-ing but not having much success keeping up with it. Personally I was not impressed with Socialtext.

  3. Wow, too funny. So far all the wiki-fied people I’ve met have been “yay wikis” and didn’t really care which one I was using. Guess wikis are going the way of blog software.
    I just installed MediaWiki at home (replacing MoinMoin) and I love it!! Same wiki as Wikipedia uses. We’re running at home on my new iMac G5.

  4. You would think someone could read the last couple of posts and frame a good idea and understanding of what is being talked about, but seriously what is wiki?

  6. It’s basically an internal department website. Every project the department is working on has its own page, and anybody in the department can update any page with blog-style entries. So if I get a call from a vendor saying that some equipment is going to be delayed being shipped, rather than sending out an email I would post a message to that page. This way (in theory) I don’t need worry about forgetting to include somebody on the email, and I don’t bother people who have nothing to do with that project.
    From my limited experience, the software running these things don’t feel like mature products yet.

  7. Having worked in two different OpenSource Wiki shops, one which used Twiki and one that uses Kwiki, I’d be interested to know what sorts of features you get in these commercial versions. Having set up Twiki myself, it’s an interesting mish-mash kind of system that could only have been designed by committee. But it does work, and in the right environment can be really useful. However, there are things that Wikis don’t do well, which is essentially support moderated or structured processes, like Product Development. It’s really just a free-for-all content management system with no central brain. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it puts the responsibility for using it correctly on the users.

  8. Ugh, I saw that story and I felt terrible for everyone involved. They’re just damn tools, people. The worst part is this is just encouraging people to be gun-shy and reserved in talking about what they’re doing, for fear of being hassled by a press story months or years down the road.

  9. It’s Wiki To Rock A Rhyme, To Rock A Rhyme That’s Right On Time

    Mike Pusateri, the customer who is at the heart of the so-called wiki war nails it. “The point isn’t what software we are using, but can we get people to use wikis at work? I tell ya folks, it ain’t

  10. Well, after all the mileage that SixApart and NewsGator got from my post last year that Techdirt picked up about you using MT and NewsGator for shift logs at Disney, you can’t be surprised about all the attention this is getting. And I think that Anil is being a little disingenuous, given how much 6A liked the early positive publicity.
    Great line about “the cost is less than I spend on soda pop for the office”. Kinda hard to see a big business with that kind of revenue stream.

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