Heat Death Of Wiki

I've just moved to a new job, and I'm slowly going through my two gigabyte disk archive, working out what to keep online, what to burn to cds, and what to throw away.

Two things I'll probably just delete are my five years of usenet archives (almost every OO post from about 1987-1995) and about as many years of archives of the PatternsDiscussion? mailing list. While they were great at the time, I haven't read usenet for years, and will soon drop off the patterns lists, I think.

I haven't kept archives of WikiWiki postings, mine or others I found interesting, perhaps because I harboured a sneaking suspicion that they were more permanent than they may turn out to be. Certainly, there seem to be more new faces on Wiki then ever before, and huge cultural movements and events of great significance seem to sweep past almost weekly.

Perhaps this is just the RestaurantReviewEffect writ large. With projects like ExtremeProgramming and the PracticalProgrammers? pointing many readers to Wiki for all they're worth, many more new people are coming into Wiki. It's great, but it's not a SmallTown? any more.

-- JamesNoble (opinions not facts!)

I would say it's been more like a small village quite a lot of the last few months in fact, but with a greater ratio of visitors to regulars than in previous times and that can create problems. Then there's been a big crisis, some famous names have reappeared briefly and RecentChanges hasn't been so full for months. Not sure what it all means. But the RestaurantReviewEffect is definitely part of it.

The issue you raise about the permanence of contributions here is interesting. This is an assumption many of us have I guess made, based on assumptions of TrustAndResponsibility. Some of us have been trying to re-evaluate this in the last week.

-- RichardDrake (opinions not facts also)

Perhaps every implosion is followed by rebirth? See SecondWikiRenaissance

Hmm... I was just making one of my random visits to wiki, saw this page in RecentChanges, read the first couple of paragraphs and though "hey, this page is great, it's just what I would say..." and didn't realize until I read the signature that I had actually said it - a couple of years ago I guess. This is what I enjoy about wiki; the little narratives, small stories, who knows what lies around the next odd corner?

-- JamesNoble

What's this got to do with HeatDeath??

[Another person] Maybe it is TooManyCooksInTheKitchen and someone decides to behave like the "GreenButcher" (see movie) :(

CategoryWikiCollaboration