Wiki vs Sharepoint

What is wiki?

• 'wiki wiki' in Hawaiian language, meaning something "quick". This doesn't tell much about the nature of wiki, just that it is quick and easy to do what you want.

• Technically: A set of web pages that everybody can edit.

• Essentially: A tool that enables collaboration: An easy way to build a common knowledge base that is made of the contributions of different persons.

• The Definition of 'wiki' in Wikipedia: A wiki is a type of website that allows anyone visiting the site to add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing. A wiki by nature enables and encourages people to add content to it.
Wiki as a developer tool

The Mozilla foundation (the developers of FireFox, Thunder bird and more) use the WikiMedia software for the development process. Like many other free software project, the contributors are spread all over the globe.

Wiki VS Sharepoint

• Sharepoint
1. Sharepoint is a shared file system - a repository for documents

2. Represents hierarchical structuring of information, within a somewhat rigid organizational framework

3. Supports MS proprietary data formats like .doc and .ppt

4. Has some scheduling and other organizational features that work with other MS tools like
Outlook

5. Requires IE running on Windows

• Wiki
1. Wiki is a shared knowledge base.

2. Very flexible organization and cross-linking structure defined by the users, although it has no
formal hierarchical organization

3. Possible in Wiki: have conversations/arguments about a topic, use interlinks, use images, Query the wiki as a data base, search for key words, look at user contributions.

4. MediaWiki has a version control mechanism (with diff capability). Possible to know who contributed what.

5. It is less frightening to edit a wiki - any mistake can be undone. However there is no WYSIWYG interface, editing is text based with simple formatting

6. Emphasis on content over format

7. Works on all platforms and browsers, requires no special proprietary software and is accessible anywhere

Wiki and Sharepoint can be used as complimentary solutions, Sharepoint as a document repository and Wiki as a front page/interactive collaboration system. The wiki can of course link to documents in Sharepoint, although simply putting a big list of Sharepoint docs in the wiki greatly reduces the benefits gained by the wiki paradigm.