4 ms·

Why use Atlassian when you can roll your own Wiki

5 points by postingposts 4y ago

Just curious about this one. It seems most of the time what people are doing with Atlassian is also accomplished through the Wiki site structure which, to my knowledge is quite easy to replicate. I’m just curious why there’s such a weird asymmetry between how often open-source tools are used vs. how often we deploy small sites for ourselves using open source. I personally don’t feel Atlassian does anything truly special that isn’t accomplished with some simple things like one does with wiki. I’d absolutely love to hear a dissenting opinion to this!!!

suramya_tomar 4y ago
In one of my previous roles we had an ongoing argument about using Confluence vs Mediawiki as both were already deployed and we wanted to promote MW more due to the cost (plus it's opensource). The main reasons cited were as follows: * Easy usability, Confluence was a lot more easy to use than MW * Great integration with other tools such as Jira (You could embed Jira tickets etc in the Wiki) * Looks nicer
joedrago 4y ago
Your usage of "wiki" here suggests you meant Confluence (an Atlassian product) vs just "why use anything Atlassian offers", but I think the answer is the same. Disclaimer: I'm not necessarily advocating for choosing Atlassian's suite of products over a handful of separate open source tools, but just offering a guess from what I've seen at companies I've worked for. I believe people choose Atlassian's tools as an overall package, often surrounding their issue tracking tool (Jira). If you happen to use/need/prefer Jira for your issue tracking, the wiki-like tool that Confluence offers just happens to be integrated tightly with Jira (and their other tools). If you've already chosen Jira (say) and you need a wiki (Confluence), or a git repository (BitBucket), or a status page system (Statuspage), etc, my guess is Atlassian bundles and integrates this all together in such a way that companies just go for the total package. To your point, I'm not sure why someone would use Confluence as a wiki over some other wiki software, assuming they had no interest in integrating their wiki with a bugtracker, git repository, etc. I think the selling point has always been the bundling/integration.
- postingposts 4y ago
  I think that’s a fair point to make. What would you say about something like Trac, which is also open-source, includes a wiki and rolls in git along with subversion. Really I guess the ask is this: Why even bother trusting someone else with reliably hosting data?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dave4420 4y ago
    You’ve got to trust someone. Do you trust yourself to host all these things more than you trust specialists?
    - postingposts 4y ago
      You won’t like it: But yes, I do. That said I’m an outlier in most all cases and that’s not really a pro for my argument nor a detraction from yours.
      - dave4420 4y ago
        What do you mean by “you won’t like it”? If self-hosting is the best option for you, do it. I won’t judge you. I just don’t want to take that option for myself, and I don’t want to be judged for it either.
  - joedrago 4y ago
    Perhaps I'm not up to date on Atlassian's hosting options, but every company I've ever worked at which uses Atlassian (including my current) hosts the servers themselves, I believe. You pay for the software/licenses/updates, and Atlassian simply hands over a pile of Java jars and documentation. It is up to your ops staff to choose a server, fire it up on there, back it up, update it, etc. This would be the same as running your own Trac, right?
    - 4y ago
yuppie_scum 4y ago
Three words: Single Sign On
- josephcsible 4y ago
  Atlassian isn't the only vendor that supports SSO.

5 points by postingposts 4y ago

suramya_tomar 4y ago

In one of my previous roles we had an ongoing argument about using Confluence vs Mediawiki as both were already deployed and we wanted to promote MW more due to the cost (plus it's opensource). The main reasons cited were as follows: * Easy usability, Confluence was a lot more easy to use than MW * Great integration with other tools such as Jira (You could embed Jira tickets etc in the Wiki) * Looks nicer

joedrago 4y ago

Your usage of "wiki" here suggests you meant Confluence (an Atlassian product) vs just "why use anything Atlassian offers", but I think the answer is the same. Disclaimer: I'm not necessarily advocating for choosing Atlassian's suite of products over a handful of separate open source tools, but just offering a guess from what I've seen at companies I've worked for. I believe people choose Atlassian's tools as an overall package, often surrounding their issue tracking tool (Jira). If you happen to use/need/prefer Jira for your issue tracking, the wiki-like tool that Confluence offers just happens to be integrated tightly with Jira (and their other tools). If you've already chosen Jira (say) and you need a wiki (Confluence), or a git repository (BitBucket), or a status page system (Statuspage), etc, my guess is Atlassian bundles and integrates this all together in such a way that companies just go for the total package. To your point, I'm not sure why someone would use Confluence as a wiki over some other wiki software, assuming they had no interest in integrating their wiki with a bugtracker, git repository, etc. I think the selling point has always been the bundling/integration.

postingposts 4y ago
I think that’s a fair point to make. What would you say about something like Trac, which is also open-source, includes a wiki and rolls in git along with subversion. Really I guess the ask is this: Why even bother trusting someone else with reliably hosting data?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dave4420 4y ago
  You’ve got to trust someone. Do you trust yourself to host all these things more than you trust specialists?
  - postingposts 4y ago
    You won’t like it: But yes, I do. That said I’m an outlier in most all cases and that’s not really a pro for my argument nor a detraction from yours.
    - dave4420 4y ago
      What do you mean by “you won’t like it”? If self-hosting is the best option for you, do it. I won’t judge you. I just don’t want to take that option for myself, and I don’t want to be judged for it either.
- joedrago 4y ago
  Perhaps I'm not up to date on Atlassian's hosting options, but every company I've ever worked at which uses Atlassian (including my current) hosts the servers themselves, I believe. You pay for the software/licenses/updates, and Atlassian simply hands over a pile of Java jars and documentation. It is up to your ops staff to choose a server, fire it up on there, back it up, update it, etc. This would be the same as running your own Trac, right?
  - 4y ago

yuppie_scum 4y ago

Three words: Single Sign On

josephcsible 4y ago
Atlassian isn't the only vendor that supports SSO.