Walled Gardens

Unresolved WalledGardens on the WikiWikiWeb.

Note: Declaring some pages a WalledGarden isn't a recommendation for their deletion. It's a suggestion that more refactoring could improve the pages' coherence with the rest of Wiki.

In some cases, the original creators of the pages seem to have given up.

RichardKulisz groups:

The "capabilities" pages are weakly connected to other pages but largely consist of RK material.

Treatment

There are several ways to improve a WalledGarden:

  1. Break down the wall by adding links to and from other WikiPages
  2. Migrate its content outside the wall
  3. Refactor its content into a single page and consolidate incoming links
  4. In a radical case, migrate its content to another wiki (if OffTopic for this wiki, but OnTopic for another)

These methods are not mutually exclusive.

Finding WalledGardens

There's no script to detect WalledGardens (unlike, say, OrphanPages), but WikiLinkStructureAnalysis identifies a number of candidates.

Q: Doesn't the fact that this page links into them make all of them no longer examples of a WalledGarden - and therefore resolved?

A: The problem is not just that WalledGardens aren't linked to, but also that they largely do not link outside of themselves. Besides, whether or not other pages link to a WalledGarden doesn't have much to do with whether those pages are a WalledGarden or not. We're talking about integration of content, not link structure. The WalledGarden complaint is made on behalf of a human reader, not a user-agent.

Q: What's the turnaround time for purging pages when someone is using them as a "scratch pad"? It seems axing pages in less than 24 hours is a bit hasty...)

A: It depends on who stumbles across them, and how they feel about OffTopic pages. Some pages disappear in an hour. Some WalledGardens have been around for years. See DeleteThisPageSoon and DeletedButWelcome for discussion on this. See also the next note about experimenting with wiki ...

To those experimenting with wiki

If you're experimenting with Wiki, or using it as a temporary scratch pad, it's polite to note that fact at the top of any pages you create. An example (customize to taste):

My [interest] group is trying to figure out whether a wiki is right for us. We plan to test it for the next week or so, and should be done by [date]. After that we'll delete the pages or move them elsewhere.

You could also try using InstikiWiki to explore the wiki concept. All you need to do to get a running wiki is download, and run the install script. You can have a private wiki in about 5 mins.

If you do not have Ruby and Rails, but have Windows, an easier alternative might be to use the latest (version cloned) of EddiesWikiTwoOhOneFour (which see)

See RefactorByMerging, WikiSquatting, WikiSquattingResolved, WalledGardener, CulDeSac, WalledGardenDiscussion

CategoryWikiMaintenance

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