A few faqs about MSDN Wiki

I’m super excited about the response to the MSDN Wiki launch.  Much of the response has been positive, and folks have asked some great questions.  Let me try to address a few of the common questions people have about the site:

Will this be added to the entire MSDN Library or other doc sets? 

Most likely; MSDN is already investigating this.  The current project is a joint development effort between MSDN and the Developer Division, and our focus for v1 is on adding wiki-like features to the Whidbey docs.

Why are you adding yet another website that contains the same set of documentation??

One of the comments to Soma’s post about MSDN Wiki provides a comprehensive lists of all the places you can find developer content on Microsoft.com – msdn, msdn2, windowssdk.msdn….  Yes, there is already way too much content duplication, and search can produce incredibly confusing results since it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether content is coming from Everett docs, Whidbey docs, etc.  We’re releasing this beta on a separate site since it’s basically an experiment and we’re not quite sure how it will work out (although initial indications are positive J).  We want to keep the official docs separate for now in case we run into performance problems with the wiki software (we’re not sure what kind of write volume to expect) or we have vandalism problems and find that we need to add more moderation features.  When we officially release v1 of this functionality (ideally by the end of the calendar year) we plan to roll it back into the official Whidbey documentation (currently on MSDN2). 

When will you support FireFox?

Soon!  For this release, we got to a point where we had to choose between making our editor work in FireFox and fixing some editor bugs causing content drop-out.  Since the bugs in the latter category affected more users we decided to fix those and punt FireFox support to a future release.  It’s high on our list of issues to address in the near future.

How can I delete content?

I’ve already seen a few cases where people have created new content blocks and then found a better place for the content they added (either merging it into an existing block or placing it on a different page).  After they moved the content, they weren’t sure what to do with the block they had created.  They needed delete functionality!  Right now, only moderators can delete content.  From observing the wiki over the past couple days, we’ve realized that we need to extend this a bit so that all contributors can delete blocks they create.  

That's all for now...more coming soon.  I'm trying to read as many blog posts and comments as possible to collect feedback and questions about the site, but if you have particular questions you'd like to make sure I address, please post them here!

-- MollyBos, MSDN Wiki PM