JD made an interesting point here about a desire to have the ability to create what I will call a new "project space" at will; a place where we can discuss, document, brainstorm, and implement a programming idea. The idea has merit and it brings to mind a question of what [web] tools are needed for such things? A wiki? A forum? A blog? A run-of-the-mill CMS? I've tried to do this stuff before and invariably things break, and I'd like to figure out why and what to do about it.

The Wiki

The wiki is a great place to brainstorm ideas and document direction. Beyond this I don't know what it has to offer. It's a terrible medium for discussion and it's not ideal for one-way communication "from on high", so for "immutable" docs a wiki is a bad idea.

The Forum

This is a great place for discussions and to hash out the merits of feature x vs feature y. The problem with forums, however, is once the topic thread leaves the front page it's a dead topic no matter how eloquent. Forums are great for ephemeral conversations and hashing things out, but they beg for someone to do a "formal writeup" after the fact. Forums make terrible reference material.

The Blog

To be honest I'm not even sure how this could be useful to a development team. It has all the drawbacks of a form and the wiki but none of the gain. And yet it is a tool for getting information out. Does it even apply in a development environment?

The CMS

This one can work for those immutable documents (but then how is this not a wiki with security?). This gives a person(s) the ability to push out those few settled upon docs, but again, isn't this premature in a development environment? Isn't this the tool to use to distribute the software and have press releases and stuff?

The Trac-like Thing

I'm not a major fan of Trac; it doesn't work for me all that well. But the software idea of having a shared list of "action items" and bugs, along with milestones, goals, and deadlines could be handy. I'm not sure to what degree but it could be handy. Now having a browsable repository . . . that's not too shabby either, especially if it displayed the commit logs in a meaningful way.

The Main Question

What things are needed in order to create a project space? Right now I like having a forum (in which only the invited devs can access) and a wiki. Are there other components? Is there a way to join these two into one package (a wiki/forum combo)? Thoughts? Ideas? Flames?