Appropedia allows people to share their knowledge thanks to wiki software. There are many options in wiki software though, and some that we have specifically considered, or which have been suggested to us, are:
- MediaWikiW - this is what we are using. It's tried and tested on Wikipedia, other Wikimedia sites, and many other wikis besides. It has a community of developers who write extensions to enhance and adapt it, some of which we are using.
- Pros: Probably no other wiki compares to MediaWiki's stability, community support, and guaranteed future development. Many extensions.
- Cons: Focused on the needs of Wikimedia. Less intuitive than some wikis. Slow to add extra features such as WYSIWYG (but when they do, it will presumably be very stable).
- Wagn[1] - semantic features; every element of the page is a "card", giving great flexibility.
- Pros: Flexibility, ease of editing different elements of the wiki.
- Cons: Hasn't reached version 1.0 yet. Less proven. Uncertain stability.
- TikiWikiW
- Pros: built-in forums, blogs, project tracking, etc.
- Cons: Less proven & stable than MediaWiki (but more established than Wagn).
What we (the Appropedia community) most want in a wiki might include:
- Stability
- Project tracking, and other features to empower collaboration on the wiki.
- Easy tracking of conversations on talk pages. All conversations viewable together like a regular forum; but associated with the relevant talk page(s) like a wiki.
- WYSIWYG (FCKeditor is usable with some issue around tags; it looks like it might be ready by early 2009.)
- Translations, or rather multilingual functionalities, in order to create content in several languages. http://www.wiki-translation.com/tiki-index.php?page=CLWE+Demo+Screencast&bl=y