Baselining+Wikis+for+Documentation

What is "Baselining" as it relates to wikis? Well, in order to understand the concept, we must first understand the definition of "Baselining." According to BusinessLaw.com, the definition of Baselining is the "process in which all key participants in a program or project agree on the detailed description of the objectives and performance requirements, and commit to execute it accordingly." In general terms, it is a standard that users agree on.



Why is this important? Well, when using a wiki for documentation, you may need to have a baseline for a particular release of documentation. Your documentation may be held to various legal standards, as well as a number of other possibilities. The main point here is that you may need to have a set standard agreed upon, and this can be problematic as wikis have content updated, deleted, etc., at any given moment.

On the website, dmncommunications.com, a number of ways to baseline a document are given and provided in a bullet list below:


 * Utilize the tracking feature on the wiki
 * "Any wiki worth anything automatically tracks the history of changes to a page. It keeps a record of changes that were made to a wiki page, broken down by date and the changes that were made on a date. And using the version tracking feature is the easiest way to baseline your content."
 * Lock down the baseline version by copying the wiki content to its own page
 * "All you need to do is edit the wiki page that you want to baseline and copy all of the text and markup. Then, create a new page and paste what you’ve copied into that new page."
 * Snapshot the baseline version
 * "It is quite easy to go into the directory on the wiki server that holds the text files, archive the files, and then move them to another directory on the network."
 * Use a different format, convert the baseline version
 * "It’s possible to convert wiki markup to a higher-level markup language, like HTML, XML, or LaTeX. If you have a number of files, you can optionally merge them into a single document and convert them to PDF."

For more info about base-lining see: []


 * Sources:**

Nesbitt, Scott. //Baselining Documentation on a Wiki//. DMN Communications, 19 Feb. 2008. Web. 4 Nov. 2011. 

//Baselining: Definition.// Web Finance, Inc. n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2011.