What’s the “Best” Wiki?

When I show people my introductory presentation on wikis often the first question I’m asked is. Well, then, what wiki should I get? What’s the “best” wiki?

In the Winter of 2008/9 there is no such thing as the “best” wiki or the “best” "collaborative software suite." Each platform offers different capabilities and appears to have different strengths.

What’s important is to match your organization’s requirements with a platform.

• You could think about what collaborative software capabilities are of most importance to you, and then figure out which platforms have them. I list the most obvious ones in the post before this one.

But there are lots of other things to consider as well, which ultimately may be more important.

• Beyond your tech requirements (which can include simple things like we want a platform that is installed on our server, or more specific issues like programming language, security features) there are dozens of features you’ll want to look at: things like what level of permissioning you need, notification functionality, document versioning, ease of use, quality and type of support, tagging capability, export capability—the list can be very long.

• Wikimatrix is a good place to start to narrow down options. You can perform a customized search on attributes critical to your organization. Just know that not all information on Wikimatrix is up-to-date or accurate—check out particulars on the vendors’ websites. (Potential inaccuracies create the hazard that a wiki might be the right one for you but not show up in your Wikimatrix customized search short list.)

And once you have narrowed your list, it’s important to know that there are key functionality gaps in every product, and they may not be immediately apparent when you just read about the platform.

For example:

• Search is important for every wiki. Test it and try to talk to users to see what they think of that product’s search functionality. Does it return useful results?

• If tables or spreadsheets are important to you, test out that platform’s tables/spreadsheets.

• With repeated use you are likely to find that none of the WYSIWIG editors act exactly as you would like; developers are still working on this. Play with some so you know what you are getting.

• You may also find that notification systems are lacking. Be sure to test these and any other functionality important to you.

The bottom line is before deciding on a platform: test it and try to talk to other users. Then pilot it before signing on the dotted line. (Migrating from one wiki to another, though doable, is often not a pretty picture.)