This afternoon, while chatting with Joyce Davis about the agenda for our August 2009 Lotus Technical Information and Education Community Meeting, we had the following exchange:

Chris Toohey I worked on an article last night. Sure, might not be everyone's cup of tea but it's showcasing a development technique that will be the basis for future-proofing applications - regardless of the technology platform used. Readership so far is luke warm.

Joyce A Davis you posted it in the wiki?

Chris Toohey no, not too sure if it fits in there.

Chris Toohey it's stuff that, well, out of context would be confusing to say the least - it might be too niche.

Joyce A Davis Chris, nothing is too niche for the wikis. People won't read it if it's not interesting/important to them.

Chris Toohey ok, you've convinced me.

Admittedly, it wasn't a hard sell. I absolutely believe that the Domino Designer Wiki is an excellent resource for the greater Lotus Development community... but I was hesitant nonetheless.

I'll explain.

On my site, I can post whatever nonsense I want. I can post about some off-the-wall concept that's crawled into my brain that hour or bang out a few quick examples of the playground-level thing that I'm working on at the moment.

The idea of cross-posting my Now() + n series to the Domino Designer Wiki just never occurred to me, more because I felt that the Wiki is a location for more best practices approaches while (especially in this series) my work is often intended for non-RAD developers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that I'm some uber-l33t coder or something like that - I just don't that most of the things I discuss here will really find their way into the day-to-day development practices for the occasional reader of this site.

Back to the point: Joyce is absolutely correct. The Domino Designer Wiki is the perfect place to put such an article. It's not only a concept that I believe it, but it's something that - if properly adopted - can save a developer countless hours of hack-work to achieve the ever-changing functionality that your customers demand.

So I plan to cross-post each of my Now() + n articles to the Domino Designer Wiki, and have started with my first: Leveraging MVC-style design techniques in Domino Application Development.

This way, my article not only has the potential to reach more readers, but I can work with the Domino Wiki Leads - as I mentioned the other day - and get developerWorks Author Achievement Recognition Program points... for something as simple as copy/pasting my own content.

And I'm not the only one doing this. Another member of our community - who has recently been producing some truly amazing content - is in talks with the program leads to ensure that the cross-posting of his content is recognized.

So whether you run your own website or not, just keep in mind that no content is too niche, too simple, or too "well everybody knows that!" for the IBM Domino Designer Wiki.