A recommended Wiki for document collaboration / management?

Question

I'm trying to convince the team I'm working for (which consists mostly of semi-technical or non-technical people) to drop our Windows-shared-folder stored word document based method of working on shared documents (product documentation, requirement documents, design documents, marketing material etc.) in favor of some web based Wiki like collaboration system.

The thing I'm looking for should have the following capabilities:

1. Shared, web based
2. Allows creating and editing documents and organizing them in a book-like hierarchical tree
3. Keeps track of revisions
4. Allows exporting to some portable format (PDF, Word, OpenOffice, HTML)
5. Allows searching through content
6. Editor must be WYSIWYG or WYSIWYM or at least convenient enough to work with for non-techies
7. Allows embedding of images
8. Allows discussions around content, for example allows people to comment on text without actually modifying the content
9. Provide an ability for people to "watch" or be notified when some pages change

I would also really love to have tagging capabilities (as in source control): that is I could "tag" a revision of the entire Wiki (or a document in the wiki) for future reference (e.g. if working on product documentation, tag it for a particular product release).

I would also really like it to be open source and based on free software technologies, preferably LAMP - but that's not a must. Low cost commercial software might also be an option.

Built in access control and authentication is not that important (I can secure it through external means), but an external service like Google Docs is not an option right now.

Can anyone recommend a system like that or something that comes close to that?

Answer 1

There's MediaWiki and Apache uses MoinMoin (http://moinmo.in)

Answer 2

MediaWiki does almost all of the points you are looking for (except tagging). I say 'almost' because "creating and editing documents and organizing them in a book-like hierarchical tree" can be done by hierarchical linking, but perhaps you may not get what you expect.

On the other hand, I would not use a Wiki for all of what you listed. I think it is not a good idea to write requirement or design docs "too collaboratively". Marketing material is often expected to consist of high-polished brochures, that is the domain of DTP programs (though MS Word is not too bad for this). And personally, I think if you want version tags for your documents, put them under your regular source code control system.

For example, we have changed our product documentation in the last years allmost completely from Word to Docbook. This ist not WYSIWYG, of course, but since the documentation sources are now text/XML, it integrates finely into our Subversion repository. Plus, we can generate PDF and CHM help from the same source - I do not think there is a Wiki out of there that can beat that.

Answer 3

Hello Shahar,

From your list of requirements, I'd like to suggest our collaboration offering - Cyn.in.

Cyn.in is an open source collaboration software that combines the capabilities of wikis, blogs, microblogs, image galleries, file repositories and more within a secure unified environment.

Spaces in Cyn.in can help you organize information in a hierarchical manner. The organic structuring model scales automatically as compared to a premeditated intranet or any other type of site model which does not work very well to accommodate changing and growing requirements.

The Wiki has a WYSIWYG editor and enables embedding of images / videos /audios from within the site as well as content from other sites like youtube, slideshare etc. All content is versioned and users can revert back to an older version at any time.

Cyn.in enables contextual discussions on every content that is added. Users can discuss and add comments to a wiki, blog, image etc. without really modifying the content. These comments enable rapid creation of knowledge and form the basis of collaboration within Cyn.in.

Faceted search enables you to slice and dice information to discover / reach to the information that you are looking out for. You can also search inside word documents, excel sheets, pdfs etc.

The AIR based desktop client enables you to immediately get notified of what is edited or newly added to your site.

Cyn.in is open source and free to use and you can get started immediately by installing the community software appliance.

Check out the Cyn.in features here: http://www.cynapse.com/cynin/features

You can also register in the community to see how we are using Cyn.in for our community collaboration.

Answer 4

I would recommend DokuWiki - it allows for plugins, it has WYSIWYM style editor, it is all txt files, so it is easily readable even offline if you download all the files.

Answer 5

confluence WIKI should do what you want