This week, I took a look at several wiki websites where you can sign up and voila! have your very own wiki. Now, as to forewarn you, I am profiling these wikis based on being an extremely busy full time worker who wants a simple site where people can gather to read and participate. No big thrills needed at this time (perhaps in the future). Translation: I need something quick and easy! But I don’t want to compromise functionality or a good look and feel. So I ended up trying to create the same wiki on 4 different wiki sites to see how easy (or hard) it would be and how the end result would look like. Also, take into account that I'm the type of person who doesn't like reading directions or FAQs unless I really need to. I'll rate the Initial Impression, Ease of Wiki Creation, Overall Experience, and Overall Satisfaction of each site on a scale from 1 - 5. 1 meaning "this wiki site is so not worth it". 5 being "king of the wikis".
seedwiki
I quickly disregarded seedwiki. Their website was just too busy for me. And although they have a cool feature where they have links to their wikis with the size of the link based on how much activity there is (the more activity, the bigger the link and vice versa), after clicking on a few, I couldn’t find one that was visually appealing, and most I couldn’t even understand.
Initial Impression: 1
Ease of Wiki Creation: didn't bother
Overall Experience: 1
Wiki Link: none
wikispaces
And then after taking a look at wikispaces, although I liked the clean look, I wasn’t sure if this was the right one for me. They have a basic plan that is free and then if you want more features you can upgrade and pay a monthly fee. Since 2 of my 4 criteria included quick and easy, thinking about which plan I wanted seemed like time better spent looking at my other 2 choices.
Then, after exploring wetpaint and pbwiki, I went back to wikispaces, feeling like there could be a better wiki out there and that this might be it. Creating the wiki was relatively self-explanatory. It also follows a menu creation like that of pbwiki. But what I really like about wikispaces is the look. It's very clean. Translation: no ads. However, I only signed up for the Basic plan, which is supposed to have ads. Perhaps, they will be there tomorrow?
Initial Impression: 3
Ease of Wiki Creation: 4
Overall Experience: 3.5
Overall Satisfaction: 3.7
Wiki Link: http://workexperiences.wikispaces.com/
wetpaint
The first thing that catches my eye is a video titled “see how it works”. Score! I don’t even have to read to find out information about this one. Just click and watch. The explanation is easy to follow and I can also look at other people’s wikis from the homepage for examples. Their website content is very also conversational, which adds to the ease of use. Signing up was easy enough, however towards the end, there is a widget to import contacts from your email client so that you can notify people of your new wiki and encourage them to participate. Well, it didn’t work for me which caused some slight irritation, causing me to forgo that step. Then editing the pages itself seemed like it was supposed to be more intuitive that it actually was. I finally got the hang of it, finished my wiki setup, and then stepped back to take a look at the page. Not too bad, considering it was free. But I do have to say, compared to the other 2 wikis I signed up for, the ads on wetpaint seem more obtrusive.
Initial Impression: 5
Ease of Wiki Creation: 3
Overall Experience: 3.7
Overall Satisfaction: 3.5
Wiki Link: http://workexperiences.wetpaint.com/
pbwiki
Just like wetpaint, pbwiki had a Getting Started video. And setting up a wiki here was ridiculously easy. I had to get used to their method of adding new pages and creating a menu (like wikispaces). It's doesn't have a hierarchy like wetpaint does where you can created a main wiki page with a sort of sub wiki pages. And the initial look of this wiki is functional but not that flattering. I took a look at other pbwikis and it's definitely doable, but it will require some time.
Initial Impression: 4.5
Ease of Wiki Creation: 4.5
Overall Experience: 4
Overall Satisfaction: 3.7
Wiki Link: http://workexperiences.pbwiki.com/
And the Recap: seedwiki - bad. wetpaint - easy to setup, ads crowd the page. pbwiki - easy and functional but not initially flattering. wikispaces - tied with pbwiki for king of the wikis (for now)
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