Tiki's tagline is "Software made the wiki way". What do we mean by that? To illustrate, let's compare Tiki to the best known wiki: Wikipedia.
- Wikipedia is about building an encyclopaedia (content and knowledge). See Mission statement
- Tiki is about building a tool to manage information & knowledge. (An encyclopaedia or anything else)
Wikipedia has policies and guidelines for vast collaboration. How do these correspond to Tiki?
Also read up on Wiki Way communities.
Neutral point of view
Make features generic and use sensible defaults.
Tiki options, settings and preferences are like representing various points of views.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV
Notability
In Tiki, we must also decide which features are added and removed. Since we are not limited to making an encyclopedia or to a specific use case, in our case, usefulness is the main criteria.
Does the feature work?
Are people using it?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
No original research
"Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
In Tiki, this could be interpreted by: use existing code when possible and when it makes sense. Partners
Verifiability
Does the feature work? Is anyone using it?
Let's see some documentation, screenshots and live sites!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
Merging
"A merger is a non-automated process by which the content of two pages is united on one page."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Merging
and if there can be confusion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disambiguation
Similar to how pages are merged in Wikipedia, similar features in Tiki can be merged to avoid duplication of effort and to make it easier for the end user.
Article titles
In Wikipedia, "The title serves to give an indication of what the article is about, and to distinguish it from other articles."
In Tiki, feature names are descriptive because there is only one of each. In other web apps, there are commonly several extensions/plugins/add-ons for similar functionality, and thus, they come up with creative names to distinguish theme. And sometimes, the extensions/plugins/add-ons name doesn't convey what the feature does.
In contrast, in Tiki, we pick the feature name to be as descriptive as possible, much like Wikipedia article titles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_titles
Not a bureaucracy
And this one is important to remember 😊 Tiki is not a bureaucracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules
- SWOT
- Model
- Wikipedia also needs software and is behind the MediaWiki engine. See Tiki vs MediaWiki.