Rob Church wrote: According to Wikipedia, Mediawiki is a CMS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:MediaWiki#CMS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system ): "A content management system (CMS) is a computer software system for organizing and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content. A content management system is frequently a web application used for managing websites and web content," Could anyone who feels with conviction that Mediawiki is NOT a CMS, please explain. Thanks, Roger

On Sun, 2006-02-05 at 18:55 -0700, Michael Dorosh wrote: The problem that you have is that there is no concrete definition (the CMS page on WP notwithstanding) of CMS. It's a general label that has come to be applied to "that stuff that's non site-specific, and sits on top of a Web server". Because so many people first hear the term in connection with a specific CMS, they often come to expect that that CMS's features are universally "CMSish". It is often more valuable to discuss specific terminology for specific tasks. For example, Vignette's StoryServer (now simply Vignette) was based around a workflow publishing system. Workflow is a common element of many CMSes, but not, for example, MediaWiki. Revision control is a major part of MediaWiki, and of many other CMSes, but not all. The feature list goes on. MediaWiki *is* a CMS, but that does not mean that it provides that facilities that everyone has come to expect of a CMS (nor, in all cases, should it). -- Aaron Sherman <ajs(a)ajs.com> Senior Systems Engineer and Toolsmith "We had some good machines, but they don't work no more." -Shriekback

On 2/6/06, Sy Ali <sy1234(a)gmail.com> wrote: The critical word here, I think is "management". The wiki-way is doing content management only in the loosest sense. It's really a way of content organization, which allows the content to be built up as a directed graph of nodes/articles/pages whatever you want to call them. But a wiki itself leaves management of the content to the users. It takes a laissez-faire attitude to controlling what the content is. Wikis are really a social experiment which tests the notion that a base of interested users can police the content without requiring sophisticated/complicated policies implemented in the software. We're in violent agreement here, except since wikis don't focus on management, I think that it's stretching things to call them a Content Management System. Perhaps another term like Content Aggregation System might be more appropriate as a general term which would cover a gamut including wikis, CMSes, file systems etc. It's not really a matter of faith, but one of beliefs. The "wiki-way" is a belief that it's better to allow incorrect content to be quickly fixed by users instead of putting security hurdles in place which prevent this. It's a belief that the user base is better at keeping the content on track than a pre-planned authorization scheme. It's interesting to note that the Content Management System article on wikipedia makes no mention of wikis, and the Wiki article makes no mention of CMS, Content Management System(s), (or even the word management for that matter). This also appears to be the case with the corresponding talk pages for these articles. So while one could read the definition of CMS from the wikipedia article as covering wikis, I think that it's stretching things a bit. It seems that there are a lot of folks who discover wiki software like mediawiki or one of its "competitors," then decide they really want more "management" and start asking for features which are incompatible with the belief system which motivates the wiki developers. At the risk of stirring up controversy, that's somewhat like walking into a mosque because you think that it's a beautiful building, wandering around inside for a while, and then asking, "where can I get a beer? Let's put a bar in that corner!" It's an example of Maslov's observation that "when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." When the tool bag doesn't afford the tools to meet your needs, it might be time to start looking at adding to it. Those looking for more structure to managing access and creation of content, are probably better served by looking at other tools such as drupal, plone/zope or the many other available tools which come from different belief systems. -- Rick DeNatale Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/