I’ve been researching an article for STC Intercom about wikis and technical documentation as discussed in my previous post. In about two years of my interest in the topic, I have only discovered a handful of examples of wikis used for end-user documentation for a technical product. And sometimes I even stretched the term “technical product” to include all of eBay. Heh.
If you’re also interested in wiki research, I have also been compiling bookmarks of blogs or websites that comment on wiki use on del.icio.us too at http://del.icio.us/annegentle/wiki.
Anyway, here’s a list of the ones I’ve found as good examples so far, but my criteria are loose and fast, such as recognizable products or geeky products. I’m sure there are more, and this list of the top 57 wikis based on popularity offers an even longer list.
- Apache wiki: http://wiki.apache.org/
- Adobe Labs: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
- eBay: http://www.ebaywiki.com/
- Motorola Q: http://www.motoqwiki.com/
- MSDN: http://www.msdnwiki.com/
- Quadralay: http://wiki.webworks.com/FrontPage
- SplunkBase: http://www.splunk.com/base
But instead of soliciting more examples, I want to ask a few more questions myself. How many of these wikis would I use to get an answer to a question? Probably all of them. Now, how many wikis have I contributed to? How about you? If you haven’t ever contributed to a wiki, why not? If you have, tell us which one, and what motivated you to contribute?