Wiki Is Dead

Long live Wiki.

Naww, it's not dead. It's just restin'.

"I'm not dead yet, I'm getting better."

It's dead if you like pattern discussion. It's dead if you like ExtremeProgramming discussion. It's looking kinda schizophrenic if you like DocumentMode. But some other things, it's very much alive. Wiki is different things to different people. Its maker has decided to use only the very tiniest of pushes in one direction or another to guide it, so it's pretty much free to go where we take it. Roll the ball where you want it to go. If someone else wants it to go there, they'll push it as it rolls by. If someone doesn't want it to go there, they'll roll it back.

If someone really felt it was dead, they should resurrect it ;-) [I am of course referring to EditText]

Like all things alive, Wiki needs periods of rest and mild diversion. Depriving it of those might indeed kill it, if the analogy holds. If it seems to be resting, afford it the respect you would a resting person. (Shhhhhh! Not so loud.)

Wiki became bigger. It collected so many pages. Naturally new people get a lot to read. Reading takes time. This time can not be used for writing any more. But it is still valuable time. Pages get edited and improved. To ReFactor takes time too but pays. -- ManorainjanHolzapfel 10/2014

I am one of the people who have stayed around here for a long time and write on some topics and try to make links among the pages to help make it accessible. I don't often hear from the readers and hope that they enjoy their discoveries. There are so many pages here that I keep finding things I did not know. -- JohnFletcher

"The graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely. [But then,] sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody."

And on a related note: http://polemics.us/archives/000587.php

About the same as "Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!"? [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net-Predicted-.html] ImminentDeathOfWikiPredicted!

Is it dead w.r.t. patterns and stuff, or just mature with not much left to say? Sure, not every single AntiPattern has a full template description and there's theoretically some work to do, but the judgement that the Wiki must therefore do that work is a very human one; the evidence would suggest that nobody actually sees it as worth the effort, therefore in some real sense, it is not. While no one human may be completely happy with the contents and it's not formatted like a professional book, perhaps it has more or less reached the optimal effort-to-result ratio w.r.t. patterns and software design.

Or, since those pages don't have zero activity, maybe it's just in maintenance mode with those things.

Individual humans should be very careful when trying to judge what a community "should" be doing; communities are smarter in some ways then any of their individual elements. Perhaps the community as a whole has spoken.

It is not dead, but I think it is dying. Edit wars and the "google problem" have rendered it ignored for the time being.

Doesn't one of the anthropic principles apply here?

Possible explanations for activity slow-down:

Wiki is full: most software development topics are covered and zealots/partisans have finished making their cases about each one.
There is some unnamed alternative out there that is drawing away activity
The novelty wore off
Wiki is too big and/or cluttered such that it's hard to search and follow
Offshore outsourcing has resulted in the field moving to non-English speakers (or English-challenged).
Search engines don't like this wiki.
Spammers and vandals have made authoring annoying.
Asperger's-afflicted computer scientists have made spamming and vandalizing annoying.
- Do you mean Asperger's-afflicted computer scientists are being annoying by spamming and vandalizing? Or that they've made it annoying to spam and vandalize, and so there's less spamming and vandalizing?
- Note that I did not write this despite similarities to past rants. --top
People are waiting for TopMind to go away. -t
- I have been seriously pondering deleting every thread-mess created by debates with TopMind (deliberately not placing blame). I think wiki would be better for it by a lot.

What would be effective perhaps is sorting out the ideas of TopMind into another programming model similar to how I think ObjectOrientedProgramming ought to be done (to lazy to check if it is).

I think there are a very small number of people actively engaged here. There are new software topics, such as programming for GPGPUs (see GeneralPurposeGraphicsProcessUnits) and I have been contributing information to a new section on this without noticing any other contributors. I am working on the assumption that there are readers who can gain from the linked information which is here. I know that I often find useful things I have never seen before. I have been encouraged by the renewal of discussion since the beginning of 2012. -- JohnFletcher

Wait, somebody wrote something here last year? Well, it took until now for a page on MineCraft to be made, so... WikiIsDying?.

You're sure it's not that MineCraftIsDying?

I still read here and write sparingly. I do think the "patterns discussion" is played out, but I think that's more about the life-cycle than anything else; look at the time that it began. Java was new and exciting, OO was still coming into the mainstream, the world was its orchestra. These days "Java" is more likely to be a swear word than something we want to happen. By this point everyone who's reading has dealt with a lot of the patterns in their most pathological forms (BeanFactoryFactoryImpl?.getInstance().getFactory(BeanProvider?.DB2_PROVIDER).getInstance().getBean()), so "patterns" are a lot less theoretical and interesting than they once were.

There are still a few new people coming in, but you're right -- most of the original pattern-based thought is really dull in 2014. A lot of the patterns ended up being god-awful in practice (or, at least, over-applied), and more powerful languages have made others obsolete. Unfortunately, much of the wiki is encrusted with ancient debates about failed 1990s software projects and XP practices that look quaint in retrospect.