That Wiki Thing...

It's been roughly a year since my pet wiki has been active on the company's intranet. It's definitely been useful, but I think it hasn't completely lived up to the hopes and dreams I had for it.

Usefulness to My Good Self

As I'd planned, I've been using it as a kinda design notebook, although I still scribble on real paper as it's the quickest way to record thoughts. When I write a wiki page, I find I write for an audience other than myself. And that's no bad thing as I have to state assumptions and 'formally' defend any assertions. I'm convinced this is ok; my paper notebook is for exploration and the wiki is the crystalisation of the thought process that lead to the final design. The wiki is the definitive source of information about a topic, not a discussion. The wiki has added a sense of rigor to thinking behind the stuff I produce.

Y'know, maybe I shouldn't be setting up wiki pages willy-nilly. I shouldn't actually be doing my design in wiki pages. Wiki pages are supposed to be solid information, not cloudy half-thought-out explorations. It should not really be an extension of my paper notebook, should it?

Usefulness to My Teammates

This is harder to judge. I think it's somewhat useful to my teammates in a read-only sense, but that it's still considered as "Marty's wiki" and not "the wiki" as I'd hoped.
I have made an effort to let people know of its existence. After I complete a body of work, I check that the page in the wiki is reasonably accurate and then the link is sent around in the 'announcement' email. For example:

Hi All, I'm finished setting up the co-sim environment for our latest chip (which is the bee's knees, BTW, and going to make our company millions). See here (http://ourgroupswiki.some.address.com/) for info on the environment and instructions for launching a sim

That sort of thing. And there is evidence that people read it, but they don't edit it if something's amiss. I do get the odd query on the accuracy of instructions, but my teammates never change the information themselves. Maybe they've better things to be doing - maybe they don't feel that they're an expert in that field so need consensus. Who knows?

The Elephant in the Room - Sharepoint

The wiki's relationship with Sharepoint is still mostly undefined.

Sharepoint is our company's blessed online collaboration thingy. But it's become a dumping ground for powerpoints and word documents. And mostly Office 2007 versions of stuff I've no hope of opening on my linux workstation (vendor lock-in, much?). Rant aside, this is where the latest datasheets, latest marketing info, latest formal design documents go. And to be honest, it's probably the correct place for that info.

So...

I need to properly define the wiki's place in the grand scheme of things. I know it has one, but I haven't yet been able to articulate it. I also need to ask my teammates why it's not "the wiki" yet.

I dunno why I'm invested in this so much.