Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Is Google Sites a wiki? I think not.

I went to Ward's oriogional wiki, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples, seeking ammunition to blast Google Sites (http://sites.google.com) with.

Although http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sites says that Google Sites is a wiki, I don't think it is.  Or, at least, Google Sites is a lot harder and more painful to use than most of the wikis I am familiar with (Ward's original, mediawiki, twiki, moinmoin, zwiki, ...)

I think Google Sites, née JotSpot, is really one of those CMS that started independently, and then tried to adopt the wiki moniker after the fact.  Or else was developed by someone unfamiliar with wiki, who put a wiki-like cast over something else.
     Overall, in terms of my least favored, most hated, wiki faker sites,  Google Sites is less than Atlassian Confluence, and roughly equivlant to Microsoft's FlexWiki.

My main complaint: Google Sites makes it hard to create links to pages that do not exist yet.

Actually, Google Sites makes it hard to create links period:  There is no quick syntax like WikiWord or [[double bracket links]].  The keyboard shortcut alt-I gets you to a place where you have to choose from a too-ling list of link tyes.

But, worst IMHO: there doesn't seem to be a way to create a link to a page that does not exist yet.  At least not that I have found.  In creating a link I can create a new page - but there's a big difference between a link to a page that does not exist, and a link to a newly created page.

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I *want* ti like Google Sites as a wiki.  But IO can't.

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Google dpcs is even less wiki-like.