tips-computer-whyWikiAsPrimaryCommunicationChannel

I recommend that you make a wiki your group's primary communication channel. Why?

Wikis have three advantages over email lists for discussions of enduring interest; all three of these are primarily concerned with making it easier for newcomers to "catch up" later:

1) On an email list, there is often a large amount of redundancy. Many messages will say the same thing as other messages. After redundancy is discovered, there is nothing to be done about it; what is said has been said, and goes into the archives. Someone looking for information on the topic later will be faced with multiple messages to read through instead of just one.

On a wiki, by contrast, everything can be modified. If two comments repeat each other, one of the comments can simply be deleted after the conclusion of the discussion.

2) On an email list, many messages are essentially "first drafts" lacking clarity, and readers are forced to wade through a large number of confusing messages.

On a wiki, confusing text can be revised later, by the original author or by others. Since text on a wiki is effectively "edited" a number of times by a number of people, he end result is greater clarity.

3) The organization on an email list is necessarily according to date. This can make it hard to find information in the message archives later.

A wiki provides much more opportunity for structuring information. Information can organized by topic onto different web pages, and tables of contents, categories, or indices may be created and dynamically updated by the user community. Furthermore, information may be reorganized long after it is posted. Successful wikis can become better and better organized over time, in contrast to email lists, which start out with a minimal level of structure and stay that way.