Don Shenbarger makes a valid point in 070115 MMDigest about the
transitory nature of information formats, and that must of course be
taken into consideration.  Hence the wiki I'd propose (DokuWiki) is
specifically designed with that in mind: the source information is
always stored in _plain text_ files, and is therefore always readable
directly by any text editor.

There is also no database -- the files are stored in directories
(folders) -- so there is no chance of obsolescence there.  Backups are
easy, and because of the text format, the data is readable there as
well; try that from any other data repository!  (For those concerned
about the "speed" of a wiki based upon a file structure, current
research suggests that for moderately-sized data it's actually
faster, and in the case of dokuWiki there are two levels of caching
to boot!)

The PHP, JavaScript and stylesheets are only the interface to the
data, and of course may be replaced in years to come without loss of
information.  The DokuWiki interface currently presents the result as
XHTML (which now supercedes HTML), but the pages are also natively
available (as XHTML) without the navigational elements, or as the
raw text.  Therefore I'm still confident that a well-chosen wiki is
a superior solution for group collaboration.

I'd love to see a mechanical music wiki as a permanent data/document
repository, and will proceed if you will all support it by participating.
More comments?

Todd Augsburger - Roller Organs
http://www.rollerorgans.com/