Lunch & Learn 2.0 Questions and Answers from the Wikis-in-Action webinar--presented by Jeff Brainard from SocialText

- I am a publicist for authors. Would wikis be something an author could leverage for their website, and would it be cost effective?

Yes, you could have wiki communities built around your publicity firm, your individual authors, or other content. One well-known book - Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott - uses the Socialtext wiki to foster community discussion around the book. Visit the site to learn more - http://www.socialtext.net/wikinomics

- Can you provide a general description of your pricing model?

Socialtext offers the most flexible deployment options in the industry, We offer open-source software and virtual appliance options for free download at www.socialtext.net/stoss, as well as hosted services and dedicated appliances that are priced on a per user per month basis.
Customers interested in trying Socialtext wikis can sign-up for a free 14-day trial here - http://www.socialtext.com/trial/1.

- Does SocialText's wiki cost money? suppose I need to collaborate with a couple of colleagues building a budget using Excel. How would I determine whether or use a wiki (which I need to set up to do this) or just go to Google and access their shared, online Excel tool?

Socialtext offers open-source software that is available for free download (see above link). Also for personal users, Socialtext offers a free hosted service for up to 5 users - http://www.socialtext.com/signup/personal. (Once you have more than 5 users on the hosted service, customers are then asked to pay a per user per month fee.) Yes, the Socialtext wiki could be an ideal tool for you and your colleagues to collaborate online, working through a web browser. You could use wiki pages to collaborate on unstructured data and add attachments like Office files, but if you require spreadsheet-like functions WITHIN the wiki or handling of other unstructured data Socialtext offers Socialcalc. Socialcalc allows users to create spreadsheets within the wiki (much like Excel), perform calculations and support group contribution/edits, as well as integrate with external wiki or web links, as well as support other Web Services content.

- Is it possible to modify the email capability so that pages cannot be emailed to others?

You can control access to the wiki by specifying public, private or selective edit/comment/view access. Yes, administrators can also turn off email, so pages cannot be emailed to others regardless of access level.

- Is there anything here that is not being offered by the many open source alternatives? What are the socialtext "added" features and benefits?

Socialtext offers some substantial differences versus open-source packages, including Socialcalc for structured data and calculations in the wiki, an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor, mobile access to wikis via Miki, disconnected support for off-line wiki use via Unplugged, as well as pluggable integration of wiki with enterprise IT (directory and single sign-on systems), email, RSS feeds, blogs, etc.  It's important to stress that Socialtext DOES offer an open-source version of its software with all of these features included, so IF you are a customer that prefers open-source you can select Sociatlext and not sacrifice on features.

- Would like to see how it looks when members of a wiki get infromed about new content? Is it e-mail to them? As a link or in the e-mail? etc.

When there are content changes in the wiki, users can get views of all new changes to the wiki when they log into the web-based landing page dashboard. Users can also subscribe to email notifications or RSS feeds of wiki content to get similar access to new content or changes to existing content.

- Who assures that content is appropriate, "clean", not manipulated, etc.?

Just like with email, it's possible that someone could mis-use or post inappropriate content in the wiki. With emails, once the 'send' button is pressed, then the message is out of your control. In comparison, with wikis, individual users or administrators can 'garden' the wiki and moderate discussion, for example to remove inappropriate content. If a legitimate wiki page is updated with bad content, the revision history of wiki pages allow an older 'clean' version to be saved over the newer 'corrupted' one. This revision history can also be valuable to track all changes or any manipulations to a wiki workspace. Also, since most corporate wikis authenticate users to the wiki before they can publish, edit, comment or view content, then if there are changes, it's easy to determine who made the changes.

- Can wikis be used for document review, and document editing?

Absolutely yes. Content developers, whether technical writers, engineers, marketeers or sales personnel, often collaborate on a wiki to develop content. The wiki provides a shared editable workspace for multiple contributors to collaborate on a document, as well as full revision history which is valuable for tracking changes. Socialtext also offers the ability to export single or multiple pages as HTML, Word or PDF, which can be valuable for turning content collaborated and finalized within the wiki into a public distributable document or integrating into a document management system.

- How does a wiki compare to a SharePoint site? What are the advantages of one over the other?

SharePoint provides a range of portal services which complement the Socialtext best-of-breed wiki. In fact, existing SharePoint users are deploying Socialtext's SocialPoint wiki solution which provides a pluggable wiki solution that works inside of SharePoint and integrates with other key Microsoft components like Active Directory for authentication and single sign-on to provide a complete dynamic intranet or extranet solution. For a best-of-breed wiki solution, Socialtext is far superior to Microsoft's more basis wiki-like functionality. Examples of leading features only available with Socialtext wikis include rich features for commenting, editing using a WYSIWYG editor, getting mobile and unplugged access, as well as integrating blogs, RSS feeds, email, tagging and search.

- How would you compare Socialtext to Confluence?

Confluence is a developer-focused solution that is based heavily on Java and requires extensive J2EE experience, as well as has a much greater amount of technical staffing and higher ongoing Total Cost of Ownership structure compared to Socialtext. Customers that select Confluence are typically Java shops that have strong development resources. These customers recognize that with Confluence they need to purchase and integrate a number of 3rd-party options to get a complete wiki solution.
In comparison, Socialtext offers a true, best-of-breed, integrated and complete wiki solution available as open-source for developers, as well as turnkey appliance and hosted service options which are more attractive to small to mid-sized enterprises. Even the large F500 enterprises (who do have significant development resource) are selecting Socialtext over Confluence primarily because they appreciate the optimization and security only available with appliances, like the Socialtext wiki appliance deployed behind the corporate firewall.

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