[Zope] Wiki vs Mailing List

[Oleg Broytmann]

Hello!

On Wed, 23 May 2001, Chris Withers wrote:
> > Wouldn't a good place to start discussions and collaborations be a
> > fishbowl project?  Just a thought.
>
> I have to be honest and say I find Wiki's next to useless for this kind of
> discussion, since I don't get prodded when new bits of discussion arrive.

   I, personnaly, just hate web-based collaboration. Cameron Laird and few
other people suggested me to try ZWiki. I tried. Now I hate web
collaboration even more :)

   Let me count pros and cons of web-based collaboration against e-mail:

1. Web is "pull technology". You need to download the entire page. How many
times do I need to read and reread messages on
http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/ExtendedDTMLSorting - just to
see noone added new comment? Isn't it just a waste of traffic?
   On the other hand, e-mail is "push technology" - if someone replied I
guaranteed to get the reply right into my mailbox. And the reply usually
carries not too big amount of quoting.
   What web makes good is summarizing. With e-mail, one needs to summarize
and publish the summary explicitly.

2. Editing text is certainly weak point of the web. It is plainly nightmare
to edit text in those small <textarea>s that loose all decent editing
features. With e-mail, I can use whatever editor I prefer.
   And think about crashing. Crashes are oftne, especially in the world of
that "Blue Screen of Death" OS. But even on the more stable OSes browsers
crash often. And after the crash I have to go back to that page, redownload
it, and start my text from the very beginning. With e-mail and good editor,
even after crash (that are very seldom, BTW), I can just restore my editing
session and continue.

   I certainly missed many points. I'd be glad if anyone says his/her
words in favor (or agains) web or email-based collaboration.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann     http://www.zope.org/Members/phd/     phd@phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.