Ah! Right! Someone who knows what they are talking about. So, let's dig in... Same problem here with our installation of Confluence. People think if you build the tool, everyone will take ownership of their own part of it, and the total will become an amazing Wikipedia-like constantly churning source of the latest info and intel. But it doesn't work that way due to one thing: People. Every CMS I have worked with has failed because there is nobody tasked with its success. An Editor. A full-time person who cultivates content and content creators. Someone who gets daily aging reports and finds people to pick up abandoned sections and mentors them through the ups and downs of curation and cajoling. I honestly believe - after building my first CMS in HyperCard at Apple up to the current Confluence installation I am editing today - that the tool is rarely ever the problem. No CMS on the market is just a failure. They all work to a greater or lesser degree. But the few that are successful are the ones that have someone paid, full-time, to manage the data. Also, separating the data layer from the presentation layer (the promise of COPE and XML) always requires you to go with a least-common-denominator implementation that is neither pleasant to read or use. Ultimately, you are right: There is a Better Way out there. Somewhere. My money is on thegrid.io. Literally. I paid for it. (Still awaiting delivery, tho.) The basic problem with CMS systems, as I see it, is that it tries to be the solution to anyone who wants access to the data contained within it. It's a scattershot, least-common-denominator approach that works well for very few people, marginally ok for most, and doesn't work at all for the edge cases. I want a CMS that looks at the USER, and customizes the content according to the user's needs... not the needs or design of the CMS. So until my computer knows more about my role, usage patterns, and personality - and can act on this information - I think the wiki + full-time editor model is the only real effective solution to content management. We're using Conflunce now and people are peeling away, first because it came fragmented, second because the first exodus left it outdated...
I think this is the narrow path where I see a better way. A lot of people talking about this kind of thing are saying "I need to be producing a product either for the data layer or for the presentation layer", which is probably true, but I'm not finding someone who's creating a data layer that integrates seamlessly into a separate presentation layer. I thought Google was going to do it with sites and their suite, but they always get so close to a complete product that it's infuriating. I thought atlassian could do it, but their wiki just bundles the two together. thegrid sounds interesting, but I think there's enough interest from management in a company that, if creating the site was easy enough, they would do it. So yeah, I think that's a little closer to what I want to pitch.separating the data layer from the presentation layer (the promise of COPE and XML) always requires you to go with a least-common-denominator implementation that is neither pleasant to read or use
Well shit. Then count me in. I've designed many applications over the decades, and even got one funded by venture capitalists and then purchased by Deutsche Telekom. So I can help. I also have worked with a fantastic Argentinian UX designer, who works cheap and fast. So I can bring her in when we have some functionality nailed down. Let me know if you are interested.