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DegreesOfEditorialControl

Editors can exercise various degrees of control over a wiki.

There seem to be three major types of wiki, arranged in order of degree of editorial control:

CategoryWiki

ScratchWiki

A "Scratch Wiki," is a wiki like WardsWiki.

The quality of pages on WardsWiki is highly variable. A few may be detailed and refined works of art, but most are chicken scratch. ThreadMode predominates. OffTopic is heartily accepted.

There is refactoring, and there is order. OnTopic content is likely to be organized. But, it can be a bit distracted, since there are constant pot-shots, and it's hard to "protect" an area from the barbarian hoards.

Scratch Wiki can easily support hoards of wiki-zens. Little commitment is required, on anyone's part.

Suggesting pages by spontaneous link patterns is acceptable, even encouraged, on a scratch wiki. See PageProlepsis and AccidentalLinking.

CommunalWiki

A communal wiki is occupied by a clique or community. (See CliquesAndCommunities.) It is managed. It is kept relatively neat.

The community takes responsible for what is present. The community tidies up. There is generally some sort of WikiProcess, stated or unstated.

Visitors come over, and contribute. This is a burden on the maintainers, but it is accepted, as long as too many people don't come at once.

Pages are of a higher quality, and there is a good integration system.

Things are still "fuzzy," though.

MeatballWiki and CommunityWiki are Communal wiki.

Links to non-existant pages can exist in a Communal wiki. However, it implies a certain promise to make an explanation for the link target, eventually. It also implies a certain authority- you don't fill out other people's unmade link targets, since the person probably had something specific in mind.

ManagedWiki

The "Managed" wiki likely has security measures, like Access Control Lists. You could say that the wiki is only "barely" wiki, since a large part of the goal is to keep documents the same, and carefully guard access to them.

(That said, you could still do it with wiki. You'd just have to perform a lot of reversions.)

OffTopic is only minimally accepted- enough to allow essential conversations, but likely swiftly deleted afterwards.

Contents are tightly integrated, and carefully deliberated over. There is likely a formal submission process.

WikiFeatures is "managed," to a degree. Conversation is kept focused. Though, you can still edit every page.

Links to non-existant pages are almost never made.


PublicWebJune2004Map CategoryWikiTerminology

Discussion

(I've moved much of the conversation to PublicRefineryProcess.)

I think the degree of editorial control depends a lot on how many people are writing on a wiki.

A wiki can be very focused and unified and self-consistent only if one person is doing the majority of the editing.

A wiki can have a short response-time to questions and vandalism only if there are a lot of editors in the community.

DavidCary

I think that it's easiest to support lots of people on a Scratch Wiki, and about 1-3 cliques on a Community Wiki. Hard Wiki are usually special things. I do think they tend to be ordered by only one or two people. I think they'd also make use of WikiFeatures:TemperedPages (WikiFeatures:IdeasToPlace #118).

I think it's the other way around: The degree of editorial control determines how many people are going to write on a wiki. People are attracted to sites with low editorial control. Around wiki with higher and higher degrees of editorial control, people decide not to contribute.

That's one of my arguments I want to put on ScratchWikiFirst.

But I think you are right about being focused, unified, and self-consistent- it probably requires one person doing the majority of the editing. That doesn't mean they can't or don't accept contributions, and that people have nothing to add. Only that, one person is the main editor.

As for fixing vandalism: It doesn't really require editors. "Readers" are content to revert damage, I think, provided they know how.

I've changed the name from HardWiki to ManagedWiki. Heather & I talked about the terminology on WikLossary, and we felt this was a good name. I hope nobody else minds; Judging by IRC chatter, I think everyone likes the new name.

The name isn't so popular yet that we can't change it. May as well strike now, while the iron's hot.

ModifierLiensDeProximité: WardsWiki AccidentalLinking PatrickAnderson

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