Are wikis losing popularity?

[CM30]

I posted about this on Gaming Reinvented as well, but hey, apparently a few people here are interested in the topic as well.

Basically, are wikis seemingly dying at the moment?

Because in the last few months or so, it seems like all the wiki sites I've visited have been a fair bit slower than they were a few years ago. Ignoring Wikipedia for a minute (cause people have written about the problems there in enough depth to fill multiple twenty page essays), you can see this at sites like Mario Wiki and Zelda Wiki, where the amount of content added for the 3DS and Wii U titles is a lot less than that added for older ones from the DS and Wii days.

For example, Tri Force Heroes took ages to get a decent amount of content added for it on Zelda Wiki. And over on Mario Wiki, it took me ages to get the pages for Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon, Mario & Luigi Dream Team and Mario & Luigi Paper Jam to any real level of detail. Heck, the latter still misses a lot of information, well over a month after the American release date (it only got the last location page about two days ago). Why? Because from what I can tell, only about three people were working on most things at the same time.

And hey, that's great compared to non video game wikis. TV Tropes? Well, it keeps going, but it's certainly died off a lot on the popular franchise front. New Mario, Zelda and Pokemon games used to get flooded with entries and articles. Not any more. Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon somehow has only about four entries on its 'awesome music' page and Super Mario Maker somehow doesn't have one altogether. The tropes for Paper Jam are about a quarter of what they are for Bowser's Inside Story and Dream Team too...

Doctor Who has also taken a bit of a hit there. Back in the series 1-5 days, pretty much ANYTHING that happened in an episode would get added to TV Tropes. Anything remotely scary would end up on Nightmare Fuel, anything remotely cool would end up on Awesome Moments, and well, those recap pages would get enormous in a very fast amount of time. Now? Seems like it takes forever for anything people like in the show to get mentioned over there, and the amount of updates for it have basically slowed to a crawl. Just compare seasons 1-5 here with seasons 6 onwards:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DoctorWho

And talking of Doctor Who... well, its own wiki isn't doing so hot either. Content takes an awfully long time to get added after an episode first airs in the UK, with even major characters and events being added only days after it airs.

So yeah, seems a lot of wikis have slowed right down in recent years. Alliances too, given how the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance now seems to be a glorified webring on site home pages, with absolutely nothing going on at the website or forums. Seriously, that site has basically done nothing since October 2015.

What's going on then? Are wikis losing popularity? Have people moved on from them to other stuff?

 

[ThAshleyChannel]

I dunno, the Wika I used to go to is always full with life, people always updating on the latest news. It's where I used to go to chat, but somebody there sort of shamed me to the point of no return, which is why I'm here today.

Maybe it's just the wikia's you are seeing are either dying or having slower days. People are getting lazier, my friend. You need to account for that! LAZINESS!

 

[Just a Wario Fan]

I visit the Mario Wiki and TV tropes regulary, and I can't really see any lack of participation. The Mario Wiki is still regulary updated with new polls and ¨did you knows¨ and TV tropes even got a new design.

 

[Glowsquid]

Responding to the part about Mariowiki specifically because I have the unhealthy compulsion to play Mariowiki PR person no matter how worthless and stupid of an endeavour it may be:

1: The wiki opened in late 2005, at the end of Nintendo's then weakest period and into its biggest period of commercial success and cultural exposure. Right now we're in Nintendo's worst period, with the Wii U being the failure it is and the 3DS tracking below the PSP in the west. Kinda limit the potential for dedicated editors.

2: Demographics. I was 12 when I joined the wiki, with all the free time that entails, and so were most of the editors from the period. The wiki's editorship gotten a lot older. I'm 21 now - I have a part-time job. I study at an university. I have to pay monthly statements. I can't really watch Nintendo's twitter feed to update the wiki every time a new costume for Super Mario Maker comes out anymore.

3: Change in policies. Sure a lot of articles were created in 2007, but it was usually useless stubs among the line of "[Name of thing] is a place in [game].". Eventually stubs were banned, and while the policy has since relaxed, people now try to make an article that's reasonably informative and helpful instead of worthless tat that only exist to fill red links. Similarly, there may have been more users in 2007, but a large number of them only used the wiki to socialize and roleplay, making maybe one or two worthless edits to avoid being yelled at. Policies were made against this, and because of that and changes in the Internet landscape (which I'll elaborate on below), this doesn't really happen anymore.

4: The obvious (and perhaps I'm being insulting and idiotic in pointing this out) is that well, there genuinely is less stuff to write about. When the wiki was created in 2005, there were 20 years of Mario history to write about. Now, while there are gaps in coverage stills, it's more things among the line of untranslated Mario mangas or a Donkey Kong cartoon that only aired in France.

Of course, being one of Mariowiki's two head admin, my POV is biased and for all I know, I might be in denial regarding the wiki's reduced activity. If I've been incompetent or activelly turned away editors through my words and actions, I'd like to hear it.

----

A lot of the "big" wikis have lost activity year over year, but it's usually due to internal factors and like, not people getting sick of the wiki model or whatever. Let's take a look at some of them.

Wikipedia: has a reputation of byzantine and contradictory rules, policies, corrupt administration, and unwelcoming atmosphere for new editors.

TV Tropes: Had public spats regarding its bad moderating practices and poor software (primarily lack of security). Currently has multiple wikia forks due to disatisfaction wih its moderators.

Encyclopedia Dramatica: constantly jumping from host to host and having to put NSFW and virus-ladden ads to survive.

Uncyclopedia: Failed to adapt when people got sick of Sorandom Monkeycheese humour.

More than anything though, I think what you're interpreting as the "death of wikis" is the result of inevitable fragmentation. Wiki farms existed Back In The Days, but they were less visible and had a lot of restrictions, so people who wanted a space to socialize or write about their favourite show/games whatever would be drawn to the most visible big wiki about the subject instead of creating a new one.

With Wikia completely excising any standards in the name of $$$ and making it very simple to create a new wiki, it's easy for any random to fork wikis about subjects they like but don't like the existing wiki off, make redundant wikis cannibalizing each other (so you get things like there being a wiki about the whole TMNT franchise AND one about the 2012 cartoon only no matter how redundant the later is), and children making wikis about Fucking Nothings as a mean to socialize with friends or host their personal things.

... That's my take on it anyway.

 

[CM30]

Responding to the part about Mariowiki specifically because I have the unhealthy compulsion to play Mariowiki PR person no matter how worthless and stupid of an endeavour it may be:

1: The wiki opened in late 2005, at the end of Nintendo's then weakest period and into its biggest period of commercial success and cultural exposure. Right now we're in Nintendo's worst period, with the Wii U being the failure it is and the 3DS tracking below the PSP in the west. Kinda limit the potential for dedicated editors.

2: Demographics. I was 12 when I joined the wiki, with all the free time that entails, and so were most of the editors from the period. The wiki's editorship gotten a lot older. I'm 21 now - I have a part-time job. I study at an university. I have to pay monthly statements. I can't really watch Nintendo's twitter feed to update the wiki every time a new costume for Super Mario Maker comes out anymore.

3: Change in policies. Sure a lot of articles were created in 2007, but it was usually useless stubs among the line of "[Name of thing] is a place in [game].". Eventually stubs were banned, and while the policy has since relaxed, people now try to make an article that's reasonably informative and helpful instead of worthless tat that only exist to fill red links. Similarly, there may have been more users in 2007, but a large number of them only used the wiki to socialize and roleplay, making maybe one or two worthless edits to avoid being yelled at. Policies were made against this, and because of that and changes in the Internet landscape (which I'll elaborate on below), this doesn't really happen anymore.

4: The obvious (and perhaps I'm being insulting and idiotic in pointing this out) is that well, there genuinely is less stuff to write about. When the wiki was created in 2005, there were 20 years of Mario history to write about. Now, while there are gaps in coverage stills, it's more things among the line of untranslated Mario mangas or a Donkey Kong cartoon that only aired in France.

Of course, being one of Mariowiki's two head admin, my POV is biased and for all I know, I might be in denial regarding the wiki's reduced activity. If I've been incompetent or activelly turned away editors through my words and actions, I'd like to hear it.

----

A lot of the "big" wikis have lost activity year over year, but it's usually due to internal factors and like, not people getting sick of the wiki model or whatever. Let's take a look at some of them.

Wikipedia: has a reputation of byzantine and contradictory rules, policies, corrupt administration, and unwelcoming atmosphere for new editors.

TV Tropes: Had public spats regarding its bad moderating practices and poor software (primarily lack of security). Currently has multiple wikia forks due to disatisfaction wih its moderators.

Encyclopedia Dramatica: constantly jumping from host to host and having to put NSFW and virus-ladden ads to survive.

Uncyclopedia: Failed to adapt when people got sick of Sorandom Monkeycheese humour.

More than anything though, I think what you're interpreting as the "death of wikis" is the result of inevitable fragmentation. Wiki farms existed Back In The Days, but they were less visible and had a lot of restrictions, so people who wanted a space to socialize or write about their favourite show/games whatever would be drawn to the most visible big wiki about the subject instead of creating a new one.

With Wikia completely excising any standards in the name of $$$ and making it very simple to create a new wiki, it's easy for any random to fork wikis about subjects they like but don't like the existing wiki off, make redundant wikis cannibalizing each other (so you get things like there being a wiki about the whole TMNT franchise AND one about the 2012 cartoon only no matter how redundant the later is), and children making wikis about Fucking Nothings as a mean to socialize with friends or host their personal things.

... That's my take on it anyway.

1. That's a good point. An awful lot of big Nintendo sites tended to start around that time, and my experience using forums then was that the DS/Wii era was great for them as well.

2. Wouldn't it be the other way around? Cause my experience is that uni students tend to have a lot of free time compared to kids and working adults, especially if they're not doing an extra job on the side. For example, when I was at university (I guess college for you Americans), I only had to go in about three days a week, and that was for maybe an hour or two each day. And when holidays started... well, we usually got about four or five months off in the summer, giving me lots of time for internet related stuff.

There also tends to be a tendency for internet 'celebs' to start their careers in university because of said free time (and sometimes easy access to co authors/friends with similar interests). I mean, people like ProtonJon and AzureBlade49 were much more of a big thing online when they were students, since they had a lot of time to devote to Let's Plays. And there's a lot of instances where a new blog tends to be run by two or three college students, or where said people are usually behind the next Nostalgia Critic like series. Or did that change in recent years?

3. Huh, didn't know that. But maybe that change didn't work out too well? Because Mario Fan Games Galaxy did something similar; they moved to a new board, then lost most of their general discussion stuff in favour of being more fan game based. Problem is, those general discussion obsessives also tend to make the community more active and drive up interest in the actual site subject. They'd spend a time of say role playing or something, but would on a fair few occasions come in and get involved in a topic about a fan game that interested them. Either way, their quest to be 'less general' kind of killed their site forum; the original one had nearly 1 million posts, their new one got about 50,000 posts. And they lost fan game discussions as a result, since people were less interested in what appeared to be a less active community. Perhaps Mario Wiki's policy change may have done the same thing?

4. That's a good point. Though there are still a fair amount of new games coming out, and a lot of the Mario Wiki coverage of that is surprisingly sparse.

Guess your point about wiki fragmentation is interesting though.

 

[Glowsquid]

2. Wouldn't it be the other way around?

I can only speak from personal experience, and my experience is that fansites and fan content tend to decline as their authors enter university. I can't count the times where I saw a modding project get cancelled and the author cite college/work as the reason

(though I guess it depends on the major)

3. Huh, didn't know that. But maybe that change didn't work out too well? Because Mario Fan Games Galaxy did something similar; they moved to a new board, then lost most of their general discussion stuff in favour of being more fan game based. Problem is, those general discussion obsessives also tend to make the community more active and drive up interest in the actual site subject. They'd spend a time of say role playing or something, but would on a fair few occasions come in and get involved in a topic about a fan game that interested them. Either way, their quest to be 'less general' kind of killed their site forum; the original one had nearly 1 million posts, their new one got about 50,000 posts. And they lost fan game discussions as a result, since people were less interested in what appeared to be a less active community. Perhaps Mario Wiki's policy change may have done the same thing?

The dynamics of a wiki and a discussion board are not the same. In my experience, it was very rare for the type of users I'm talking about to do any genuinely useful edit or "graduate" into being a good editor.

I would also contest the idea that stuff Back In The Days was immediatly filled out. In my experience, the trend is that "main" platformers (compare the 3D World articles vs Captain Toad's) are those that are filled out the most quickly, while the rest takes a varying amount of time to get a full set of articles - divisive and mediocre games (Barrel Blast, Master of Disguises... etc) don't tend to get filled out until years down the line. WW Smooth Moves is a 2007 game and a multi-million seller, and yet it had a crappy and uninformative page (to the point it didn't even mention the minigames or the multiplayer mode) until I made a thread about it in 2013.