<irony>At the WikiNG discussion page I wrote the following remarks, that I think not everyone will read</irony> IMHO there are too many issues muddling the discussions about wikis vs maillists vs discussion platforms. This problem is caused by the intermingling of too many different functions of a wiki. I'll go a bit at length to expose these and try to strike a balance, which should be in a combination (did I hear WikiDot?): 1.A mailing list is more convenient than a wiki because it is more instantaneous and more compelling because people get mail in their mail boxes. But mail discussions tend to wither away quickly. They go on for a day and if no one pins them down into a document they'll be forgotten. More so on a high volume list as the Zope list(s). I've seen this happen many times. Wikis have the quality of permanence both in (cyber)space and in time. 2.Discussion platforms like Squishdot, Wikis and what have you have the problem of getting out of attention of the people involved. They are permanent, but people have to perform separate actions to keep up with an online discussion and their mailboxes. Even if there is a mail-notification possibility, this leads to the situation that mails are sent as replies to the notification (by accident) and not to the forum itself (I'm not sure about Squishdot on this last point). 3.Both discussion platforms and mail lists are often too much of a sequential nature: proposals follow comments, follow counter proposals, follow comments etc. This leads to much inconclusion. A discussion is not per se over once it's withered away. A Wiki is (possibly; if used right) much more compelling in keeping discussions focused. 4.Some people think Wiki discussions are easily dispersed. Bad Wiki discussions are, but discussion products are almost always dispersed by nature. On many occasions I have (already) seen people summarize and structure maillist discussions into a Wiki web. 5.Wikis give the impression of being structured, but as is they lack structure. Both maillists and discussions have since long had the possibility of moderation. Wikis should have these too. The nice point about wikis is that you can determine which parts should be moderated (the central and the thought capturing documents for instance) and which ones are free for all (like discussions for example). The Wikis on the dev.zope site do a bit of this with delegating discussion to a discussion page. Most of these points are addressed in the proposal, but what I wanted to add is the notion of the necessity of integrating the three types of discussion into one product. That would make for a new generation. How would that look then: Make the wiki the central/anchor point for discussion. This means there should be a possibility for making central pages, spin off pages and discussion pages. - Wikis should be moderable on all levels (not editable, changes only after approval, free for all). The point up to which that is done is up to the owners/maintainers of the Wiki. - Include both a (threaded) discussion product for discussion. - Make this discussable from the web and from email. In the case of web discussion the advantages would be that discussions could take the form of annotations with a discussion. In the case of a maillist discussion this would mean instantaneous discussion. It should be possible to indicate in your email whether you want it included into the Wiki. This would also mean that there should be a structured way to integrate e-mails into a Wiki. The noding proposals (divide a wiki page into information nodes) above could well help to enable hooks for discussions. Perhaps even for determining which parts are discussable (namely only the one with a discussion node attached) not-completely-coherently-yours Rik