News

Microsoft TechNet Wiki Opens To IT Pros

• By Kurt Mackie
• 04/15/2010

Microsoft on Wednesday talked a bit more about the launch of its TechNet wiki, a Web page for IT pros where anyone can read, edit and contribute articles.

The wiki went live as a beta in March, but Microsoft described the concept in greater detail on Wednesday in a blog post. The focus of the wiki is on Microsoft technologies and it adopts the noncommercial community model seen in sites like Wikipedia.

Anyone can sign up with a Windows LiveID, which permits editing and article contribution rights. According to a video accompanying the announcement, Microsoft does have a "community council" overseeing content, but Microsoft will trust the general population of wiki users to fulfill the role of sheriff on uploaded content.

"We're all the sheriff -- that's the bottom line," said Tony Soper, a senior technical writer at Microsoft, in a video accompany the blog.

Still, the wiki does have a "Terms of Use" and "Code of Conduct" as described here. Under the Code of Content, Microsoft can revoke user access at any time.

Contributors who are Microsoft employees are identified by "MSFT" next to their name. The blog asserted that the wiki currently has a mix of Microsoft and non-Microsoft contributors.

The wiki contains over 500 pages after one month, featuring topics such as BizTalk Server, Forefront, Hyper-V, SharePoint and Windows Server security, among others. A random scroll through some of the content shows a combination of general overviews, how-to-do-it articles and technical lists.

Microsoft doesn't take responsibility for the content. The content is supposed to be at the blog level in terms of technical accuracy, although the community is supposed to correct any errors.

Even though the TechNet wiki had a launch of sorts on Wednesday, Microsoft still considers it to be at the beta level.