Slashdot: [I]s the whole world going to be using wikis instead of the proprietary dinosaurs like Lotus Notes?

October 29 2004

I received several e-mails and pings about this slashdot thread overnight.  I see a couple of people have blogged it as well.  It's prompted by a BusinessWeek article about wikis, specifically about Socialtext.
First, I think wikis are a great tool.  They are an easy way to share information, and require very little user training, are easy for users to engage in, and demand little IT overhead.  I also have a lot of respect for Socialtext.  I didn't know a lot of the details behind their organization until I read the BusinessWeek article.  It's fascinating that they are a true virtual organization, and that they are making great use of their own technology.  I hope they continue to have success in the market, and have enjoyed getting to know their viewpoint through CEO Ross Mayfield's blogging (and use of other tools like del.icio.us, flickr, and writing at Corante's Many2Many).
Still, it seems like every few months, there's an article somewhere that says that some new collaboration technology is going to kill Notes.  Long-time readers here know the score...it goes all the way back to Collabra Share, Livelink, eRoom, Groove, everything Microsoft, etc.  In most cases, the competing technology is a point solution...it addresses one piece of what Lotus Notes does.  Thus, none has been that proverbial "Notes killer".  Just for fun, I googled a few expressions like "unlike Lotus Notes", just to see how many of those competitors were out there.  Some of the hits were amusing, others showed how far Notes has come, and a few showed that even today, companies continue to try to figure out how to work a little bit of Notes magic into their own product lines.
In this case, the community has made the comparison of Notes "versus" wikis irrelevant.  Like so many other modern technologies, Notes (and Domino) have provided a foundation and architecture for adopting the new collaborative technology.  We have blogs and RSS feeds being published on Domino.  We have RSS newsreaders for Notes.  And yes, we have wikis for Domino (such as BenPoole's wiki).

Now, as for the slashdot discussion.  I wasted a good 30 minutes reading the whole darn thing this morning.  Aside - I don't normally read slashdot discussions, because I find the navigation so cumbersome.  They also have evolved in such a way that the first responses to a discussion thread tend to get the most responses...when you get further down, the energy and furor starts to peter out.  Anyway, some interesting observations -- 1) I could have bet $50 that someone would mention the "User interface hall of shame" entry on Notes... but at least this time, someone else rightly pointed out that it was written on Notes 4.6 and hasn't been updated in five years (in fact, the company that originally created the UI hall of shame dot bombed! and the site that still lives on is a mirror of the original).  Also, unusual for a slashdot discussion, there seem to be a fair number of people on side of balance -- defending and advocating for Notes.  But most point out that the comparison, as I said above, is silly and irrelevant.  Which is good.
What's really funny to me is that somewhere else in the discussion, someone says that "wikis are dead".  LOL -- I guess there's one in every crowd.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  In the news  Add/View Comments [10]

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  1. 1  john http://www.johndavidhead.com | 10/29/2004 11:15:20 AM

    its the center for the 'troll' universe, much like aint-it-cool-news.com ... people can post annon without having to have any level of credibility, and with no one policing the discussion. /. is great for finding interesting articles.

  1. 2  Sagar  | 10/29/2004 12:18:06 PM

    1){In this case, the community has made the comparison of Notes "versus" wikis irrelevant. }

    Definitely this is irrelevant comparison of Notes "versus" wikis irrelevant. And many times people just compare one feature/piece of Lotus Notes with the competing technology.But sometimes this one piece feature comparison makes user/developer unhappy. DWA(iNotes) is a great piece of Domino but it has few limitation that makes customer unhappy ex. how to open another person calendar in I notes while Notes Client provide action "Open Calendar for ..".

    There are few other limitations like ({ Link }

    If you compare Domino Servlet engine with any other product like tomcat and it will make you unhappy about Lotus.

    Domino designer,Lotus provided many new features in 6.x/7 but they are incomplete. You have code-completion for formula and script editor but not for Java/JS. If you compare Designer with eclips or VS, it will make you unhappy.

    Domino doesn't adhere to many web standards( domino doesn’t generate well formed html or incorrect doctype) that makes many web developers unhappy.

    People compare Content Mgmt capabilities of domino with other powerfull CM and this comparision make them unhappy about domino.

    People compare Sametime IM client with Yahoo/MSN messenger and they hate Sametime. Yahoo or MSN messanger is not enterprise IM client like Sametime but most of the people who use Sametime at work, use Yahoo/MSN on there personal computers.

    1){Like so many other modern technologies, Notes (and Domino) have provided a foundation and architecture for adopting the new collaborative technology. }

    If I compare Notes (and Domino) piece by piece with other technologies I hate it but when I view it as a platform of various Collaborative technologies, I love it. But I think Lotus is very slow in catch-ing up or adopting modern technologies. For example web services, IBM-Lotus is very slow adopting Web Services/XML compared to its other divisions like Websphere. When world was using JDK1.3/1.4, Lotus forced us to use jdk1.1.x for a longtime. Many features that are provided in 6.x/7 should have been provided in 5 or even 4.6.

    1){I wasted a good 30 minutes reading the whole darn thing this morning. Aside - I don't normally read slashdot discussions, because I find the navigation so cumbersome. }

    That's true, navigation is little cumbersome but its little better than LDD forums. At least I can view all the responses in one page. This is the single most reason that stops me visiting LDD forums.

  1. 3  Duffbert http://www.twduff.com | 10/29/2004 2:18:37 PM

    I'm glad I'm not the only person who doesn't like Slashdot and doesn't find the site all that interesting. The publishers I review for have occasionally asked me if I'd be interested in posting there. It'd drive traffic for sure, but I just am not interested in being drawn into discussions there.

    Reading the endless rantings and opinionated postings on the site, I realize that Slashdot represents everything I find distasteful about IT... harping about tolerance while blasting everyone who doesn't agree with truth as you see it. :-)

  1. 4  Julian Robichaux http://www.nsftools.com | 10/29/2004 4:04:33 PM

    Of course, if people are still actively trying to invent/reinvent technologies to kill Lotus Notes, I guess that's an indication that Notes is not dead after all.

    Why would you try to kill a dead horse? Why would you spend time and money trying to develop software and systems that compete against something that supposedly no one uses anyway?

    I love hearing about technologies that compete against Notes. It means that Notes must doing something important and useful.

    - Julian

  1. 5  Heini  | 10/30/2004 4:23:25 AM

    I really like Sagars comment. I think there is a lot of truth in it. And for Julian. I would not only like to have competitive tries, I would like to have products succeeding (from a technological point of view).

    I very well remember e.g. the Domino Everyplace announcement. Microsoft announced a bundle, IBM announced a bundle, MS killed it, we never heard of it from IBM again, MS came with their IM solution, IBM bundled theirs with Notes (which is good of course).

    Competition is good, especially for customers. That does not mean that you do not get a lot out of Notes & Domino nowadays but it can always be more.

  1. 6  Ludovic http://www.xwiki.org | 10/30/2004 4:36:15 AM

    Hi,

    I agree that it currently does not really make sense to compare existing wikis to Lotus Notes..

    However, I really like the comment by Sugar which says that if you compare each piece of Lotus Notes to competitors you get unhappy.. This is what you get with a non-open platform..

    Now what can we do about it ? Well we can build an open platform based on open-standards that gives us the Notes magic while being open and non proprietary.. This means that we get the choice of which part of the tool to use and which part not to use.

    I believe it does not make sense to handle the mail and the calendar inside the collaboration tool. There are much better clients and servers to handle this. Now we need a standard way to access this information and show them on our intranets.

    There are many other tools that should be handled separately..

    Now the wiki is really interesting because the Wiki Way really solves the issue of making people participate. It is simple and easy at the core. The ability to reorganise content real-time is a garantuee of being able to follow the evolutions of the organisations. It is a rare tool that accepts the chaos instead of fighting it and gives us ways to organise this chaos.

    If you add to the wiki a certain number of aggregation features in additions to these publishing features, you can make the wiki the central point of access for information.

    It's true that you could list all these features being part of Notes.. But I see a few big differences:

    1/ In the wiki, you can preserve the "Wiki Way" when adding the features.

    2/ Why should I get email and calendering when I don't want it.

    3/ A Wiki platform can be open (open API and open Source).

    Now this needs second generation Wikis. This is what I'm trying to do for XWiki ({ Link } adding aggregation, database and programming features right in the tool.

    Wikis are still a long way to displace tools like Lotus Notes but more people than you think have the vision of making Wiki tools a key element of digital collaboration. The reason is that the Wiki Way really works and that it makes sense to extend it.

  1. 7  Steve Castledine http://www.dominoblog.com | 10/30/2004 7:05:24 AM

    I find it constantly amazing that whatever "new" developments, trends etc occur - notes/domino is still in there and can do it using the core product - blogs, wiki, rss - we can do it all easily.

    All these 'little' specific tools - yet notes/domino does it all in one - bring it on!

  1. 8  Tony S Lee www.peripheral.ca | 10/30/2004 10:46:12 AM

    Notes / Domino has been able to provide decent solutions to a wide range business problems since I've been involved with it circa 1993. I know there are some glitchy aspects to the product, but not many "real" showstoppers.

  1. 9  marcus  | 11/1/2004 9:58:54 AM

    hate to admit, but i'm a bit of a slashdot addict...but more for the articles and to keep abreast of things in tech i don't normally keep up with.

    that said, I've definitely gotten into it on the threads before with the anti-Notes attitude prevalent there.

    and by the way, I'm modding Duffbert +1, insightful.

    :)

  1. 10  Brian Benz http://www.softwaresoapbox.com | 11/1/2004 11:23:03 AM

    Hi Ed,

    Hey, there are always ■alternatives■ to Lotus Notes and Domino popping up. The upside for Social Software is that anyone can grab it for free, so they don■t need IT to issue a PO, much like the early HTMl servers. The downside is that it■s very simple, and unimpressive to existing Lotus notes and Domino users. Wikis are not a threat, just a inferior alternative.

    In fact, Wikis may be a ■gateway technology■ to more advanced collaboration tools, like Notes and Domino. Users will start to use the Wiki, as use increases demands for features will grow, the limitations of the technology will become apparent, and more robust alternatives will be sought. I wrote a little bit about this on my blog, here:

    { Link }