Using Posts as a Wiki?

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21

If you feel strongly about the above and have a budget, why not start a topic on the marketplace?

22

Thanks, all. These are helpful suggestions.

At the point of needing to hire someone to adjust Discourse to make it a wiki, I’d probably say I’d just use dedicated wiki software.

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23

Those are really your only two choices here.

Discourse isn’t MediaWiki, at best it’s wiki-lite, presenting knowdge topics alongside discussion.

If you need something which is wiki-first it’s possible that Discourse isn’t going to be the best fit.

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24

One of the first things I did when embedding comments on other pages was introduced was embed/replace MediaWiki Talk pages with their Discourse discussions (adds back that talk flow :sunglasses:).

These days I just build docs in Hugo and pull in links to discussions via tags, because information wants to be free! ((And discussions are best viewed via Discourse’s web UI, IMO))

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25

I’m running a discourse install that is purely a wiki only site. It works fine with a few annoyances:

  • There is no easy way to edit the wiki (you have to scroll down and click the pencil every time: very annoying for long wiki posts).
  • There is no way to edit the same wiki at the same time with another user. I built the wiki hoping to use the collab plugin in the long run. It’s not possible though (only for enterprise customers).
  • Post length limitations are annoying. You can increase it to a point, but sometimes it isn’t enough.
  • You can’t reply on a wiki or it breaks the latest functionality, with wiki post changes not being shown. The discourse team seem intent on not fixing this. The feedback I got was pretty clear - wiki posts are second class citizens and this will never change.

Here is my wiki install. I tried to make it like a cross between google docs, and a piece of paper on a desk. The idea was to create a user friendly space for my team to collaborate on process documents. Did a lot of heavy css modifications to create it (sorry I don’t want to share that code). The only plugin i’m using at the moment is the category sidebar.

Perhaps it might inspire you a little:

2020-05-19-065604_1920x1080_scrot
2020-05-19-065604_1920x1080_scrot1920×1080 494 KB
2020-05-19-065704_1920x1080_scrot
2020-05-19-065704_1920x1080_scrot1920×1080 479 KB
2020-05-19-070010_1920x1080_scrot
2020-05-19-070010_1920x1080_scrot1920×1080 484 KB

I have no regrets so far implementing discourse as a wiki so far. It’s greatly improved our workflow and allowed us to ditch Google Docs, which I loathe.

26

Not true; click edit pencil at upper right then edit button on the revision dialog.

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27

Yes can do that but it’s not amazing from a UI perspective (my goal was easy to use for the layman). I wanted to replace the reply button on the scrollbar to an edit wiki button. But it’s too much work to figure out.

28

One point I did not follow: if you are able to use the collab plug-in, does that mean that users can do real time editing of a wiki post?

EDIT: Maybe that’s a moot point for now, as it looks like that collab plugin is not functional at the moment (if it does get functional that would be great–one of the coolest plugins I’ve seen).