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While I am still not even convinced that forums and wikis would even serve the same function, let me pluge forward with some devil's advocacy:
Without any concrete research data, I would hazard that the benefits in terms of less paid work hours in maintaining a wiki is marginal over a forum, at least as the site grows. Both are susceptible to trolling and chaos, but my opinion is that wiki software solutions have better tools to keep what is useful and ditch the cruft.
I also feel that wikis scale better than forums. Wikipedia, the eternal darling of wiki fans, is, according to alexa, the 8th most visited website in the world. I don't know of any forum that could tolerate that much (ab)use and maintain any sort of integrity.
I proposed a Forum rather than a Wiki, because a Forum allows a customer to pose specific questions and have a discussion, in private if need be, and a Wiki doesn't.
As a Forum, Wiki Talk Pages don't cut the mustard. If you want to interact with a Wiki or contribute then you need to know Wiki markup and style.
Given the choice of just one or the other, a Forum should win hands down, since those who need help won't necessarily get it from a Wiki alone and certainly not in a timely manner by any stretch of the imagination. With a Forum the whole Modwest community could chip in, including out of hours, no knowledge of markup required and you can appoint trusted customers as moderators to deal with any chaos using the perfectly adequate tools most Forums provide.
It may be open, but essentially a Wiki becomes the preserve of the knowledgeable and if you want control over that knowledge base and you want to ensure contributed content is encyclopedic and authoritative then you will either need to throw considerable paid work hours at it, or concede that a Wiki is not the best solution.
Wiki is currently trying to raise $6 million to cover costs, contrast that with the worlds largest vBulletin forum which is free to use and free of advertising yet able to donate significant sums to charity through affiliate links.
The above Forum demonstrates scalability is not an issue considering what you have in mind. You will also see that it's able to maintain it's integrity due to the way it's managed (Alexa ranking being no measure of integrity).
People usually propose a Wiki when customers keep on asking the same questions, though that in itself is not a good enough reason IMHO for a Wiki.
I agree with Squiggle. And I'd add that I wouldn't want to supplant the current knowledge base with a wiki. Googling for some PHP questions, I still get directed to the knowledge base as it is. A wiki could supplement that, but I'm not sure it could replace that outright.
I am assuming not just modwest employees would be supplying to this wiki? That it would be as open sourced as the actual wiki? It seems like a good idea, but I'd still like a solid FAQ to refer to.
Mloftis is probably right about feeding this supplemental question to the community, but without that feedback, if I were to implement a knowledge base wiki, I'd probably create a couple of different namespaces: One employee-content only, one employee & customer content, and one customer (and passer-by?) area.
My reasoning is that employees would have knowledge of our special setups and would be better able to accurately provide help for stuff like our webserver setup and quirks. Anyone, however, would be able to scour the internet to make a reference for something more standard, like crontab format.
IMHO, no number of separate namespaces will reduce the administration overhead required.
Like cfurneaux says, references to questions are important. This existing and potential customers will be searching for their question not the answer, for if they knew the answer they would not need to search.
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You'll need to employ someone part/full-time to keep your wiki from becoming a mess among other things.
While I am still not even convinced that forums and wikis would even serve the same function, let me pluge forward with some devil's advocacy:
Without any concrete research data, I would hazard that the benefits in terms of less paid work hours in maintaining a wiki is marginal over a forum, at least as the site grows. Both are susceptible to trolling and chaos, but my opinion is that wiki software solutions have better tools to keep what is useful and ditch the cruft.
I also feel that wikis scale better than forums. Wikipedia, the eternal darling of wiki fans, is, according to alexa, the 8th most visited website in the world. I don't know of any forum that could tolerate that much (ab)use and maintain any sort of integrity.
I proposed a Forum rather than a Wiki, because a Forum allows a customer to pose specific questions and have a discussion, in private if need be, and a Wiki doesn't.
As a Forum, Wiki Talk Pages don't cut the mustard. If you want to interact with a Wiki or contribute then you need to know Wiki markup and style.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_pages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_edit
Given the choice of just one or the other, a Forum should win hands down, since those who need help won't necessarily get it from a Wiki alone and certainly not in a timely manner by any stretch of the imagination. With a Forum the whole Modwest community could chip in, including out of hours, no knowledge of markup required and you can appoint trusted customers as moderators to deal with any chaos using the perfectly adequate tools most Forums provide.
It may be open, but essentially a Wiki becomes the preserve of the knowledgeable and if you want control over that knowledge base and you want to ensure contributed content is encyclopedic and authoritative then you will either need to throw considerable paid work hours at it, or concede that a Wiki is not the best solution.
Wiki is currently trying to raise $6 million to cover costs, contrast that with the worlds largest vBulletin forum which is free to use and free of advertising yet able to donate significant sums to charity through affiliate links.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/#stats
http://www.moneysavi...nance#revenue
The above Forum demonstrates scalability is not an issue considering what you have in mind. You will also see that it's able to maintain it's integrity due to the way it's managed (Alexa ranking being no measure of integrity).
People usually propose a Wiki when customers keep on asking the same questions, though that in itself is not a good enough reason IMHO for a Wiki.
I agree with Squiggle. And I'd add that I wouldn't want to supplant the current knowledge base with a wiki. Googling for some PHP questions, I still get directed to the knowledge base as it is. A wiki could supplement that, but I'm not sure it could replace that outright.
Radiohead, are you saying that search engines would not be able to index information in a wiki as well as they index our current FAQ?
I am assuming not just modwest employees would be supplying to this wiki? That it would be as open sourced as the actual wiki? It seems like a good idea, but I'd still like a solid FAQ to refer to.
that might be another feedback question. but i'd presume it'd be open at least to MW customers and maybe just in general open, if we were to do it.
Mloftis is probably right about feeding this supplemental question to the community, but without that feedback, if I were to implement a knowledge base wiki, I'd probably create a couple of different namespaces: One employee-content only, one employee & customer content, and one customer (and passer-by?) area.
My reasoning is that employees would have knowledge of our special setups and would be better able to accurately provide help for stuff like our webserver setup and quirks. Anyone, however, would be able to scour the internet to make a reference for something more standard, like crontab format.
That makes a little more sense then. I can just see things getting very confusing without references and questions answered by staff.
IMHO, no number of separate namespaces will reduce the administration overhead required.
Like cfurneaux says, references to questions are important. This existing and potential customers will be searching for their question not the answer, for if they knew the answer they would not need to search.