The idea of user-editable content isn't the problem. But wikis are an unknown quantity and a slippery concept for non-nerds to grasp. There are no affordances, no guidance, no structures to help orient people[1], and while wiki syntax is awful that's only a contributing problem.
It's like if a carpenter/handyman/car repair guy handed you a smooth, featureless egg-shaped object and said "This is a Ziki. You can do everything with this tool. Now, check my tire pressure."
Even if you knew how to check tire pressure in general, you'd be SOL.
Second issue is that people use wikis for things other than collaborative documentation, just like people use blogs for project management (just because they're easy to install), and that's not helping the adoption problem.
[1] I don't mean the document tree, either. People are used to structured content.
The idea of user-editable content isn't the problem. But wikis are an unknown quantity and a slippery concept for non-nerds to grasp. There are no affordances, no guidance, no structures to help orient people[1], and while wiki syntax is awful that's only a contributing problem.
It's like if a carpenter/handyman/car repair guy handed you a smooth, featureless egg-shaped object and said "This is a Ziki. You can do everything with this tool. Now, check my tire pressure."
Even if you knew how to check tire pressure in general, you'd be SOL.
Second issue is that people use wikis for things other than collaborative documentation, just like people use blogs for project management (just because they're easy to install), and that's not helping the adoption problem.
[1] I don't mean the document tree, either. People are used to structured content.