I wrote a post a couple months ago titled "What's a Wiki?". I should logically write one called "Why A Wiki?", but there is already a lot on the web about the benefits of using a wiki, so I am not going to dwell on that subject too much, however here are some links to help you out if you are still wondering:

In short ,wikis can easily facilitate collaboration and communication between people in networks and enhance knowledge building, sharing and searching. Almost any business or organization can benefit from using a wiki internally or externally as a web site. A wiki can pick up where email falls short when it comes to working with others and no one can argue that email is not beneficial. Email can be overwhelming, but a wiki can help with that by keeping information in a single shared space so that everyone is on the same page, literally. So, take it from me you want a wiki. That's not the hard question. The difficult question is which wiki to use? 

You can go to WikiMatrix and compare dozens of wikis, large and small, commercial and free.  There is even a Wiki Wizard  to help you narrow down your choices and you'll want to use it.  I had initially decided on MediaWiki, the same software used to run  Wikipedia, probably the most popular wiki in the world. It is also the wiki software used by many others. It is well supported, robust, yet easy to install. Thousands are using it, so I thought it would be easy to use and it is, to a point. While a few on my staff saw the potential of wiki's Mediawiki's interface and work-arounds to make it a useful collabrative tool were just too awkward. The developers make it point to indicate that their main purpose is to develop MediaWiki for Wikipedia and it shows. For example, it is easy to upload an image, but you hav eto do it in a seprate page from the page where you want to put it. You have to remember the image name or file name to include it on a page. You can also attach other documents, such as PDF's and Word files, however they are treated like image files. There is also no adequate WYSIWYG graphical editor. There are some in development, but they are either incomplete or buggy. You can say what you want about the benefits of wiki syntax, the average office worker does not want to learn it or use it on a regular basis. I personally do not mind it, but I'm a tech geek, web developer and network administrator comfortable using the command line on a remote Linux server.

To make a wiki work in the average office it has to be easy to use as email. Unfortunately, the open source wikis, while feature rich and flexible, ease of use is not a hallmark feature. For ease of use you need to look to the commercially supported wikis, such as, SocialText and Confluence. They both have a free version, but the later only for 5 users. Confluence will donate software to non-profits, but because we are related to an academic institution the Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Association would not qualify. SocialText offers an open source version, but it requires that Apache 1 and 2 be installed. I was able to install a VMware vitual image of it, but found the configuration not so straight forward and could not get the email function, a critical component of SocialText, to work. 

I then saw an article on a CNet blog that mentioned that DekiWiki from MindTouch was one of the fastest growing commercially supported open source wiki software programs on the market. The installation is more involved than MediWiki, but Mindtouch offers a VMware version like SocialText that is easy to install on the free Vmware server or Player application. I installed it and I was sold. DekiWiki, which was orginally based on MediaWiki, has all of the best features of MediaWiki, but without the non-user friendly awkward interface. It is as easy to use as email, but with a lot more functionality than MediaWiki. Check out the complete feature list on the Mindtouch web site. The full unrestricted version of DekiWiki is avilable for free. MindTouch makes money like Red Hat does , by selling support for the wiki. I think that business model will builds more good will, as well as, acceptance of the product and broader market share. It's worked for Linux and MySQL. The wiki is actively being developed, with new versions or updates scheduled for December and Febraury. There is an active community of DekiWiki developers and users at Opengarden.org.

You do not need to install DekiWiki to test it out. You can open a free account on Wik.is (.is is the country  domain for Iceland - the home country for one of the co-founders of MindTouch). You get 100 MB of space. If you want more you can sign up for the Pro version which will get you 10 GB of space and the ability to include your ads on your ite. The free version has no advertising. The cost is $10/ month billed annually. You can get it for $5 a month if you sign up before 2008.

So, which wiki? DekiWiki from MindTouch. 

In another post I'll describe how we are using the wiki and some other possible uses for the software.