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MSDN Wiki Beta

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I have always thought that the bulk of the information for any of our product is generated by the community and customers. Unfortunately, there isn’t any easy way to share the large amounts of valuable information (golden nuggets of information) with the community at large, alongside the product documentation.

Today, I am pleased to announce the availability of the beta version of the MSDN Wiki - our first step towards allowing customers to contribute to Microsoft’s developer documentation.

In the MSDN Wiki beta, you can add code samples and content directly alongside the Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 documentation in a Community Content section that we have added to each documentation topic. Right now the MSDN Wiki site only features English documentation, but we are planning to expand this functionality to the localized documentation in the future.

Though we provide a large amount of valuable information with the product, there is just no way that we can document every scenario that every developer is going to be thinking through. We run into a scale issue. Enabling the community to be a collaborator and be able to share information with one another in a relatively easy manner scales phenomenally well.

If every Visual Studio developer participates, imagine the wealth of information the community could be sharing in one location!

We think of this as the first stage of an on-going evolution of Microsoft’s developer documentation. In this version we are building a wiki around the Microsoft-provided docs by allowing you to add new content and edit content contributed by others. We want your feedback about where the project should go next. How important is it that Microsoft provides an official version of the docs that cannot be altered by the community? For Orcas, should we completely open the documentation to editing? This is the start of a shift in the process we use to write and publish our developer documentation, and we need your help to determine what approach we should take.

You can learn more about the project at the MSDN Wiki team blog.

Namaste!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
     
     MSDN Wiki!
    It’s live! http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com
    See Soma’s blog (Announcing...
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
    Very nice and useful initiative I reckon.

    Although I only took a quick look at the already existing articles, it looks very promising.

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
    Линуксоиды видели такое только в страшном сне. А-а-а!!! Microsoft внаглую берёт
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
    It sounds good although at the moment you don't support Firefox.
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
    I've been waiting for this for a while. I think it has great potential for growth. Thank you very much.
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
    I've commented here:

    http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?postid=453

    Tim
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
    The only question is what version of MSDN will be shipped on DVDs? And what about moderation of MSDN Wiki Content  by Microsoft?
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006

    Rob
    Caron had been
    hinting about it, then Soma broke
    the news
    MSDN
    Wiki is live -- http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com...
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2006
    Well, Rob hinted it at it.
    Then he hinted more.
    And even more.
    Then Soma announced it.
    Then Rob was...
  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2006
    Trackback from dotnetkicks.com
  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2006
    Great, but why ANOTHER version of the library for this?  Shouldn't this just be a feature of the existing library?  Oh wait there isn't ONE existing library, you have

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/
    http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/
    http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/library/
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/archive/

    and now

    http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com

    Could this be any more confusing?  I think you need to start cracking the whip a little bit.
  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2006
    Yesterday Somasegar (who runs the Developer Division at Microsoft) announced the beta version...
  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2006
    Soma announced a new project today, the MSDNWiki, which takes our MSDN documentation and adds structured...
  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2006
    Personally, I turn to reputable dev blogs when I absolutely positively have to find the right info to solve those intractable coding issues that arise from time to time...then if all else fails, I search the official docs ;). Well,...
  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2006
    I’m super excited about the response to the MSDN Wiki launch.  Much of the response has been positive,...
  • Anonymous
    June 10, 2006
    Great stuff!. Thank you guys for moving in a right direction! ;-)
  • Anonymous
    June 10, 2006
    You've probably already read about the MSDN Wiki Beta on Soma's blog. You can now add information to...
  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2006
    I think that this is a fantastic ideas as sometimes the MSDN code samples are not very detailed or incomplete. Moreover, they also sometimes lack real world applicability. So, I applaud the opportunity to learn from other people's experiences as well as share my own.

    Opensource communities have been doing this for quite some time. Take a look at PHP.Net as an example. Maybe we can get some tips and ideas from them.
  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2006
    Do you think this will hurt C# Online.NET-the wiki-based online C# and .NET resource?

    http://wiki.csharp-online.net/
    http://blog.csharp-online.net/
    http://forum.csharp-online.net/
  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2006
    This is all over the Microsoft blogs: so if you're following them you've no doubt already seen this (more...
  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2006
    This is all over the Microsoft blogs: so if you're following them you've no doubt already seen this (more...
  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2006
    I would like to see all the MSDN documentation to be opened for editing. You can't imagine how many bugs I have found in code samples, in the Platform SDK, etc, etc, which I would have fixed easily but I wouldn't. These errors ranged from spelling mistakes to grammatical errors, to lack of clarity to more serious mistakes. Please open up the documentation for editing.
    However, be very careful about your urls: currently they are complicated. If I have to go to http://msdnwiki.msdn.microsoft.com/library/wiki/topic.aspx?id=123456789,view=123456789 then I am afraid that I will not go there, the urls are toooooo long. If I were you I would move the MSDN documentation to a new site with an easy navigation (url) structure. Currently, not many people (like students) use MSDN documentation: they find it complex, overloaded, too long and difficult to find. Part of this problem is caused by the long urls and the navigation structure they impose on the MSDN Library site.
  • Anonymous
    June 13, 2006
    On May 19, 2003, I said "I have always admired Mike's ability to look at the world out there and put...
  • Anonymous
    June 14, 2006
    Several folks have asked about support for the Firefox browswer.  THe MSDN Wiki team has this on their list of workitems and before we RTM, will likely add this support.

    - somasegar
  • Anonymous
    June 14, 2006
    It should have sqlserver 2005 documentatio too, for example I created an article that I find very useful and it was a little difficult to implement, this one should be in the library.

  • Anonymous
    June 24, 2006
    Best of all people w can talk...
  • Anonymous
    June 24, 2006
    Argh! No FireFox support. Fix!!
  • Anonymous
    June 25, 2006
    Yes - Firefox support is one of the features currently on plan for getting done soon.  Stay tuned!

    - somasegar
  • Anonymous
    August 05, 2006
    PingBack from http://www.ikiw.org/?p=127
  • Anonymous
    August 17, 2006
    PingBack from http://skogheim.wordpress.com/2006/08/17/msdn-wiki/
  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2008
    PingBack from http://jwc.midasnetworks.com/?p=88