ButtUgly: Main_blogentry_080703

Wikis make it to the MSNBC

MSNBC has a short introduction to wikis. Cool, though a bit short.

It’s not hard to imagine how such a forum being completely open to the public could turn into a real mess, which is why Wikis seem to be primarily tools for smaller, contained groups like business work groups.

But in my experience, it is the mid-sized wikis that become unmanageable messes; small ones (such as this one here) are fine, and the really big ones seem to manage okay. But I've noticed that for example the JSPWiki site is harder and harder to keep in order: people write stuff at random places, and very few people (me and Ebu mostly) seem to bother to move them around to any sane order. On my other site there are signs of disorganization, but the larger amount of active users seems to keep it in order better.

I heard somewhere that when a wiki has between 10-100 contributors, it is then when it becomes most messy. However, I can't seem to be able to find the reference anywhere. It would be interesting to study this: What is the amount of people after which wikis start to self-organize instead of self-disorganize?

(Link through Corante.)