Features / Usability

Posted by jamesoftopiya 16 Aug 2004 23:24 GMT-0000 posts: 175

Hi;

Well I think the best way to answer this is for you to play around with both. Here are a couple of my thoughts.

First off I think that there is a great similarity and yet significantly differents between the two. It really depends on what you want to do.

Both of these may use categories. But the Articles also allow for topics.
The way these are displayed as rss are different so if you are wishing to use rss you may want to look at the effects.

The wiki,
For me the wiki is great for user pages as they are automatically created for the user.
The wiki word feature creates new pages which makes the wiki easy to use.
The wiki can be put in to structures which makes for great story presentation.
The wiki can use slides a little used feature but vrey useful fo some things.
The wiki works well for longer stories.

The Articles,
As mentioned above the topic feature is very handy.
Articles are neat as you may have a bunch of them listed on one page with the handy read more link if it perks the readers interest.
The Articles are now customizable so that different types may be created. IE: Articles, classified, ect. Check, Articles > Admin types

As I say you must look at examples or play with them to really get an idea.

James

Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee 17 Aug 2004 01:30 GMT-0000 posts: 4664

Articles might be best used for information that has a time component, as news headlines do, and as traditional "broadcast" information rather than as a collaborative effort. This is the way the feature is set up to display information: with the date given prominently, the number of reads specified, etc. There's a strong "recent news" feeling to them. Of course, you could use Articles for background information or other non-time-specific content, but then there's less reason to use them rather than wiki pages.

Wiki pages might be best for information whose publication date isn't so important. Also, Articles are more like traditional "one-way" publishing, with reader participation limited to leaving comments. Wiki pages are more interactive (depending on how you've set up permissions), and can be worked on collaboratively. They are less "one-way" or "top-down" and more "two-way" where readers and authors are less strictly defined. But these are big generalizations, and what you use depends on how you want to present information at the site, what your readers/users are familiar with, etc.

-- Gary