Wiki pages can be divided in categories. I’ve blogged about several of those categories in the post, such as:

Today, I’d like to talk about another type of Wiki page, the Wiki scorecard…

A very wise person once wrote:

“A scorecard provides fast and better insight…”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t a “very wise” person. Maybe I wrote it myself. Maybe I wrote it for a business intelligence chapter in an MS Press book. Nevertheless, it nicely sums up what is cool about scorecards.  As it turns out, scorecards can be dangerous to, considering the “What a stupid I am” anecdote at http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=16015.

On with the story… In the IT world, a scorecard is usually written by some vendor who compares his product to others like so:

Product A Product B My Product
Feature A X X
Feature B X X
Feature C X X
Feature D X X
Feature E X

Conclusion: My Product is the best!

I always wonder if such a list is fair and complete, and I’m always pretty sure it isn’t. If you could look into my mind, the previous scorecard could very well read like this:

SQL Server Oracle

If you pronounce it right, “SQL” almost rhymes with
  “Smeagol”, the hobbit who became corrupted by the One Ring

 + -

Oracle rhymes with “Bworrkul” which isn’t really a
  word, but is useful in sport events nonetheless

 - +

Hard to say which product won this battle, but my vote goes for SQL Server. Maybe we can decide the winner using the Comments section of this blog post?

Anyway, I feel that Wikis are great for keeping scorecards. The community gets a chance to alter the list of features/benefits or whatever, making it very plausible that this list will be exhaustive in the sense that all major topics will be listed. It’s also a better way to make the score section more balanced: everyone gets a chance to score. It just seems fairer  and less biased that way. Thus far, I’ve only written one scorecard Wiki, here it is: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/9638.sharepoint-2010-best-practice-keep-relational-data-in-a-database-or-migrate-it-into-a-custom-list.aspx