We started testing out the effectiveness of a Wiki on one of our games, Achaea, and have so far found it to be a fantastic tool for collaboration. I'm sure may of you are already using them, but for the uninitiated, more info on what a WIKI is can be found at:

Essentially though, it allows anyone to create and modify a set of very simple web pages using a very simple markup language. It's simple enough that the most code-averse person will have little problem using it effectively. We now use our wiki for everything from area and plot proposals to guides for new immortals/admins, customer service policies, general design, organizing our annual Gods' meet, etc.

I really can't recommend them enough for small teams of people. It's great to put up a design document, go to bed, and wake up in the morning to find comments, suggestions, and changes all over it from the various immortals who have been on the WIKI while I slept.

--matt

A Wiki is a great development tool, most certainly...

However, it's also a great RP tool. People who don't like the trouble of designing an entire webpage, for example, can put player pages up easily, and in a simply accessible location. If your mud lacks a sophisticated writing system, player writings can go there as well, which is always nice. Player art, plottings, etc... The playerbase uses are not to be underestimated!

How do you deal with security issues when you're allowing the playerbase access to it? In other words, how do you stop some jerk from messing up all the pages? In our case we use it only for immortals, who are all trusted individuals (no one becomes an immortal without hundreds and usually thousands of hours of play, going through an application and interview process, etc etc.) so it's not a big worry.

I mean, we coud allow playes to access a WIKi, for instance, and Ideally I'd love to have a separate wiki for each separate player organization (cities, guilds, religious orders, clans, the Church, Oakstone, assassins, champions, and so on and so forth) but that's going to require some custom coding to tie together Wiki permissions with the playerbase. Do you have a simpler way of doing that, or are you dealing with a playerbase small enough (perhaps with applications to play?) that you can trust them not to screw around?

--matt

One of the great things about Wiki's is that they're self-regulating. It's easy to turn a page back to what it was at before, due to the recent changes system.

The other thing is, it's not as if a player Wiki is going to be a high risk deal. True, it's nowhere near as safe and reliable as an admin Wiki, but a temporary shutdown by malicious users would hardly stop the mud. I wouldn't rely on the Wiki too much... In-game systems probably work better for most player orgs, and they're more reliable. However, the Wiki makes a nice place for other types of things... Player pages for those who don't want to make an entire site, maybe an OOC newspaper, some rough plot sketches, etc... If you backup occasionally, I doubt even a cascade failure or seriously malicious assault would do much damage... Goes down for a few days, gets restored from a week ago, players have to re-add... Not really a big loss, especially considering it should never happen without some VERY intelligent evil, due to the self-regulating aspects mentioned earlier.

I hope this makes some sense, it's 3:46 am here and I'm just waiting for something to finish printing before I fall asleep where I'm sitting.