A few days ago I posted about Dekiwiki, particularly lamenting the need for root access to install it. Aaron F, one of the bigwigs at Mindtouch, had commented on a blog posting offering help. He didn’t respond for a few days, so I posted again, frustrated. When he did respond (for the record, my original email was on 12/6, he responded on 12/12) his email read like this…

Installing DekiWIki currently is a total pain in the !@#. In fact, it can not be done without having root access, which is not provided on any shared host that I know of. We are a small team at MindTouch and have been hoping someone in the community would assist us in making the software easier to install.

Ok so he recognizes that for those of us dependant on shared hosting, DekiWiki is impossible to install. Unfortunately, Aaron articulates that it is a low priority for their team, and would be difficult to do based on their use of the mono framework (open source version of Microsoft’s .net service). So even if Bluehost would give me root access, they would have to have mono installed, which I highly doubt.

He did make an attempt to respond to Jamesen, who commented on my most recent Dekiwiki posting…

Jamesen, I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience with one of our ‘commercial units.’ I am very surprised by this. Are you referring to DekiBox? The only dissatisfied customer that I was made aware of (and I’m not omnipotent) related to a customer thinking the device broadcasted a wireless network, gave them access to the Internet, and thought it was also an email server. I encourage you to contact us directly
“http://mindtouch.com/contact”>http://mindtouch.com/contact . Your feedback is very important to MindTouch. Alternatively, you can contact me at my direct phone number: 866 MINDTOUCH ext 1102.

For the record, I did not ignore Chris. I hope that Chris posts an update here and highlights some points I made in my email to him. I received Chris’ email, as he correctly cites, 12/6. I responded 12/12. I would have responded sooner, but I was on the road. Moreover, for the volume of email I receive daily a 6 day lag in response, imo, is really quite good.

I might strongly disagree with a six day turnaround being “quite good” especially given the offer for help as a comment. I emailed him the same day he commented. I understand being busy, I guess I am just impatient in this modern world. I assume that unless a response comes within 48 hours it will receive no response.

I called Aaron and we spoke. Partly I was curious to hear the Mindtouch side of the story in terms of no shared hosting availability and it turns out to be a market issue more than anything. It seems like the education market is not thier target. They sound like a busy company, destined for involvement in corporate wikimaking, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just a choice. I told him straight out that I do not forsee many classroom teachers using DekiWiki unless it is installed districtwide. I maintain that it is hard to compete with Wikispaces and Wetpaint.

So there, I have given Dekiwiki its due. Now it’s on to bigger and better things.