Wiki Should Do What It Does Best

Two Wiki maxims for consideration:

: Let every Wiki page shine.

If we cannot make a page that is truly exceptional, we should ask ourselves: what is it doing here? There is already too much mediocre chit-chat, do we need to contribute to it?

: Respect the knowledge of other places.

Delete pages that are not exceptional

If we cannot create a page that is exceptional, perhaps we should simply delete it. If there is a topic that is not covered here, that should not be taken as an admission of ignorance, but an implicit respect for the expertise of others.

Discovery should be possible with aimless stumbling

Wiki should do what it does best. You should be able to stumble around aimlessly, using (say) RandomPages, and have an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio.

Wiki should only be a dictionary for items where this community has exceptional interest & expertise. We can be proud of our pages on UnitTests; the old page on GangstaRap, on the other hand, was an embarrassment.

Discussion Structured by Wiki Gnomes

Wiki depends on the work of WikiGnomes to keep discussions structured, which is part of the reason the SociologyWiki pages are a failure: no gnome will touch those pages.

Debating and Deleting

What it boils down to is this: Every time there's a debate about whether a topic is OnTopic or OffTopic, we should ask ourselves "Can we do the topic justice?" If so, perhaps it should stay. If not, perhaps it should go.

Wiki At Its Best

All of the above arguments reinforce Ward's preference InFavorOfDissertation. So those who also feel that way, start contributing instead of spending your valuable keystrokes in discovering, discussion, disagreement, debate and deleting. In other words: Make Some New Pages and be sure they are Pages That Shine: ReallyValuablePages.

CategoryWiki