5.2 Wikis & Weblogs
A wiki is a collaboratively-edited site where any participant can change any page. It is the simplest model for shared institutional memory, and it powers everything from Wikipedia to internal engineering docs. This lesson covers its building blocks and where it outperforms blogs and CMSes.
Wiki vs Blog vs CMS
| Dimension | Wiki | Blog | CMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary author | Many editors | One or few | Roles: author, editor, publisher |
| Time orientation | Living document | Chronological posts | Mixed pages and posts |
| Linking | Heavy internal linking | Tags and categories | Menus and taxonomy |
| Approval flow | Often direct, history-tracked | Author publishes | Workflow with review |
| Best for | Knowledge bases, manuals | News, opinion, updates | Marketing sites, intranets |
| Examples | MediaWiki, DokuWiki, Notion | WordPress, Ghost | Drupal, WordPress (pages), SharePoint |
How A Wiki Edit Flows
Figure 5.4 - Every change is a new revision, so revert is always one click away.
Why Wikis Win For Internal Docs
The single biggest reason wikis beat tickets and email for institutional memory is that the page URL never changes. New hires can land on the same canonical page that the original author wrote, see who changed what and when, and trust it without asking around.
Discussion
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