On Jan 21, 2008 8:28 PM, Timothy J. Crowell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What do you do with wikis that has never been edited, been open for > over a year and been up for adoption for months (i.e. It.tech)? Is > there a time when a wikia should be closed and given up on? I have > seen several users just request a wiki and leave before the wiki is > created.
It varies. We don't have a perfectly working tool that lets us just close a wiki, so for now, there's no consistent policy on it. Some wikis have potential to be active (like an Italian wiki on technology) so are left open in the hope someone will adopt them. Sometimes they have an "adopt me" notice on the home page. The only ones which are definitely closed are those with no potential where even the wiki's requester says they no longer want it, and it never had any significant edits. Really, those with no potential shouldn't have been opened in the first place, but it's not always easy to tell before you've given the wiki a chance. If the wiki did have any content, or readership, then it's preferable to merge the wiki with another one if it looks like it's going to stay inactive. For example, a dead Mario wiki could be merged with a Nintendo wiki. That way, we don't risk losing content or breaking links. Again, the lack of a good tool to do this is one of the reasons that has not yet been done on any large scale, but a wiki mover/wiki merger tool is being developed, so a clear up of really dead wikis will happen eventually. One partial solution to the problem of dead wikis would be to have a more helpful home page for inactive wikis with no content, so that if a reader goes to it.tech.wikia.com, they can at least find links to relevant Italian content on other wikia. Right now, people following a link there come up against a dead end which is damaging and will drive readers and potential editors away from the site. Angela _______________________________________________ Wikia-l mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l
