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No, writing the answer down takes much longer than just vocally expressing it. 1. Few people type as fast as they talk. 2. When talking, you already have all

No, writing the answer down takes much longer than just vocally expressing it. 1. Few people type as fast as they talk. 2. When talking, you already have all the context of the problem of discussion. This usually doesn't need to be explicitly communicated in detail, both people are currently close enough to the issue to have most of the background. In a wiki you need to establish enough context that the page is useful to someone who comes to it with no other help. There is no point in having a wiki if you still need to talk to one of the guys who wrote it to understand it. 3. With a wiki (or any other secondary doc system) you need to organize the information and make it findable. This is a non-trivial effort as the knowledge base grows. Personally, I'm a big fan of documentation in the code paired with a wiki or other secondary system for longer or higher-level documentation. But it is definitely more work.

ebiester 11y ago
I have a weird idea... What if, on condition of answering the question, you require that the receiver update the wiki? This may not work with close collaborators, but it would work with more distant ones on the threat of withdrawing further collaboration.
abalashov 11y ago
In a wiki you need to establish enough context that the page is useful to someone who comes to it with no other help Bingo. The idea that answers can just be written in a wiki ad hoc is one of those pleasant-sounding pithy conversation-stoppers, but it's strictly notional. It's certainly true for small, bounded, well-defined, trivial and/or obvious stuff, but that's not usually the stuff people pester the experts about (well, one would hope).
rwallace 11y ago
That's why mailing lists are great. 1. Okay, they don't address this, but that's a marginal advantage, easily outweighed by the advantages of asynchrony and distance agnosticism alone, never mind the benefits of re-use. 2. Mailing lists hit the nail on the head here, because you have the context in the discussion thread. 3. This is a big win for mailing lists with a good search function (such as that provided by Gmail). Sure, it's not as nice as having the information painstakingly organized by a subject matter expert, but as you say, the human effort required to do that organizing is not usually available, and having the information there and searchable is far better than not having it.
- abalashov 11y ago
  That's an interesting idea, and one I have considered at length before. If I ever end up managing an organisation of any nontrivial size, I do believe we will have Mailman lists for a lot of things.
jasonpeacock 11y ago
1. That's fine, most ppl don't need the answer now, they need it soon enough to not be blocked. 2. Any answer without context is useless, even verbally. So include the question with the answer when you write the doc. 3. Internal wikis are inherently trees, add the answer to an existing node or create a new node. I see most of these replies are failing wiki docs for not being perfect - you just need to be good enough. It's a living document, as it's used it will mature. The important part is capturing the information somehow, somewhere. Stop propagating tribal knowledge and document it!

ebiester 11y ago

I have a weird idea... What if, on condition of answering the question, you require that the receiver update the wiki? This may not work with close collaborators, but it would work with more distant ones on the threat of withdrawing further collaboration.

abalashov 11y ago

In a wiki you need to establish enough context that the page is useful to someone who comes to it with no other help Bingo. The idea that answers can just be written in a wiki ad hoc is one of those pleasant-sounding pithy conversation-stoppers, but it's strictly notional. It's certainly true for small, bounded, well-defined, trivial and/or obvious stuff, but that's not usually the stuff people pester the experts about (well, one would hope).

rwallace 11y ago

That's why mailing lists are great. 1. Okay, they don't address this, but that's a marginal advantage, easily outweighed by the advantages of asynchrony and distance agnosticism alone, never mind the benefits of re-use. 2. Mailing lists hit the nail on the head here, because you have the context in the discussion thread. 3. This is a big win for mailing lists with a good search function (such as that provided by Gmail). Sure, it's not as nice as having the information painstakingly organized by a subject matter expert, but as you say, the human effort required to do that organizing is not usually available, and having the information there and searchable is far better than not having it.

abalashov 11y ago
That's an interesting idea, and one I have considered at length before. If I ever end up managing an organisation of any nontrivial size, I do believe we will have Mailman lists for a lot of things.

jasonpeacock 11y ago

1. That's fine, most ppl don't need the answer now, they need it soon enough to not be blocked. 2. Any answer without context is useless, even verbally. So include the question with the answer when you write the doc. 3. Internal wikis are inherently trees, add the answer to an existing node or create a new node. I see most of these replies are failing wiki docs for not being perfect - you just need to be good enough. It's a living document, as it's used it will mature. The important part is capturing the information somehow, somewhere. Stop propagating tribal knowledge and document it!