I've recently joined a new lab; an experimental physics group of ~30 people, consisting of postdocs and PhDs and a few PI's. All of these people are using/sharing/rotating between a number of setups, machines, fabrication techniques, and so on. From what I've gathered the way information about these things is exchanged is mostly horizontal; the new PhDs learn from those who have already been there for a while, and they themselves learned from those who have already been gone for a few years. In my opinion, this way of learning leads to a lot of lost expertise over the years (PhD cycles), or at the very least to a lot of inefficient re-discovering of what was already known at some point.
I therefore thought it would be a good idea (not my own of course, it was already done like this in my previous group and I assume it to be common practice in many places) to start a wiki-type environment for our lab. A place to collect knowledge of the different setups (manuals, wiring diagrams, tips and tricks when encountering issues), fabrication recipes, maybe even administrative steps to take when a student enters or leaves the lab. This is not an exhaustive list by any means of course.
My question was if anyone here has any experience with this, in terms of how to set something up and what good practices would be. It definitely does not have to be free if that means better privacy and features.
This question Good practices with lab wikis? touches on it a little, but that's all I could find. That's probably also because the question is perhaps a little offtopic; setting up a wiki is perhaps not the most academia related question one could come up with, but I do feel like because it is only to be used in the academic setting some of you might have experience and insight I wouldn't get somewhere else. So if anyone has any experience with this, or any tips on how to get started, that'd be much appreciated.