Dot wrote:So would you use the Wiki to get the content developed, then once that content is settled, pour it into the CMS? (I hope it's OK to ask such newbie-level questions here.)
In my "other life" I work on technical committee which uses a wiki and what I call "static" webpages in a way
similar to what Dot suggests (but not exactly):
The wiki allows collaborative development of documents (along with the background discussion on proposed amendments in the "talk" pages) in a way that most people can get to grips with fairly easily. There's flexibility to re-organise the content and adjust hierachy as the documents grow. But once we get to the "published" stage we also need to offer quick access, printable versions. In our case, we wouldn't port the wiki content over into HTML pages, we actually import into OO Writer, do some re-formatting to "pretty up" the document and output a PDF which we then put back on the website for download.
I don't think I'd actually ever want to move content off a wiki and into a CMS/HTML for a number of reasons. Firstly, unless you delete all the wiki content then you have the "same" material in two places - if the wiki continues to be updated then you confuse people by having different versions offered, depending on where you're looking. If do delete the wiki content, then you're implying that the documents are "frozen" and you're at least making more work to open them up again for any future updates. Wiki markup doesn't all port readily into HTML/XHTML/XML/whatever, so migrating to anything else probably will mean someone will need to do some "work", and I don't see there's earned value in that - in my example, having a printable document is a
requirement, so the argument is slightly different. Anyway, my preference here would simply be that once you think a document is "complete" you lock down the editing: People can still add comment to the "talk" pages so don't really lose the opportunity for feedback, and it's simple to re-activate the document.
One of the benefits I find with the wiki, is that the comparatively limited formatting features mean that it is much easier to maintain a consistent "style" and layout, which ultimately aids readability, even though it can look a bit utilitarian at times. GIve a team of 6 people the task of editing sections of an MS Word or OO Writer document, then when you come to re-assemble the final document you'll have 6 different style lists to resolve!