Wiki while you work

A question came up this week in a client meeting: why would we use the Wiki feature of SharePoint when we can just use a Document workspace to work together on a document?  Here’s how I described some scenarios when each would be appropriate:

• A document workspace is great to use to support collaboration on a single document or group of documents.  The idea is to create an environment in which you can work together on a document and then when the document creation is completed, you migrate the document itself to a more permanent “home” and delete the workspace used to create it.
• A wiki, however, is more appropriate when what you are trying to create is going to evolve over time or when the end product of the collaboration isn’t a document.  A wiki site is good for multiple authors to work collaboratively in the same site on a web page rather than a document.  Wiki sites are a useful tool to brainstorm ideas, collaborate on a team design, build an encyclopedia of knowledge, or just gather routine information in a format that's easy to create and modify. Team members can contribute to wikis from their browser — they don't need a word processor or special technical knowledge.  One fantastic application for a wiki site in an SharePoint-based intranet is to collaboratively build your acronym dictionary.  I can’t think of a single company that wouldn’t benefit from a site where users can collaboratively work on the ever evolving list of acronyms used completely uniquely in every organization.

At the end of the day, you need to use the technology or tool that will most effectively enable the task you are trying to accomplish. 

• SharePoint 2007
• wiki