Walled Garden

If you feel you have a lot of content to contribute to a wiki all at once, you may be tempted to write a bunch of different pages, interlinking them all. Don't. We call this is a WalledGarden, and it stands out in stark contrast to the areas of the ThisWiki that are living.

"We"? Looking at the WalledGardenDiscussion, it is not at all clear that you aren't creating a little walled garden yourself. In fact, before I edited it, this page looked like a solitary tree that no kids were allowed to climb. Blech. AllDataRelatesToOtherData eventually, just be patient. As people discover clusters of pages, they will start to interconnect or the isolated pages will die out. Deep roots can take a long time to interconnect. I think you've been pruning the wrong branches.

The living areas are much trafficked, edited by many and read by even more. They exhibit the selflessness of a living space, belonging to nobody and everybody. If you learn to slowly integrate your own wisdom into this broader space, the process will be far messier and slower, but the feedback you receive from others will be more considered and rewarding.

Lots of people have been here, some for a short while and some have stayed a long time. Others drop in from time to time. I think that WalledGarden is not a label leading to deletion, more an indicator asking for connections to be explored. On my home page I have a section for adopted orphans which I have linked to as I have found them. There is no fixed pace and I keep finding things which I was not aware of before, often while myself gnoming. It was said of the human DNA that most of it was redundant and I think opinion is changing on that. -- JohnFletcher

Some platforms where software can be developed, such as Apple's iOS, have been called WalledGardens because they have restrictions on what kinds of applications users can run, and what kinds of applications developers can publish. Is there a page on this Wiki about that concept?

Identifying characteristics of WalledGardens

Sudden appearance and growth ...hmmm
Single author or small set of authors ...nice
Rich interlinkage, but a paucity of links to and from the rest of ThisWiki ...Why are you calling it "ThisWiki"? Seems proprietary
Page names that discourage AccidentalLinking (e.g., prefixing each page name with the WalledGarden's topic) ....Hey we agree on one point!

Not all WalledGardens exhibit all of the characteristics. Never forget, that a wiki has no walls unless you made them.

WikiSquatting is creating pages that are clearly off-topic for a wiki.

By contrast, a WalledGarden (at least as the originator originally imagined it) is a large set of pages that are suitable for a wiki, but bring in their own organizational or conceptual baggage, and hence integrate poorly with the rest of that wiki. The content is appropriate, but the form prevents integration.

Walled Garden example: Samir has developed a neat new programming language. He uploads ten pages to this wiki, all of which explain the language, but link to no other pages in this wiki. They may link to each other, and indeed contain a "navigation bar" at the bottom of each page that link to all the other pages in the same set. This is a WalledGarden. It is OnTopic, but not integrated.

Please direct discussion about WalledGardens to WalledGardenDiscussion. Bleah

For examples on this wiki, see WalledGardens.

Contrast with: PiecemealGrowth, CulDeSac

Another view: VirtualCollaboration

File under: CrystalPalace. This wiki does not have file under.

CategoryWiki CategoryGardeningMetaphor