Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-209674-20140225224507/@comment-24.184.64.133-20140313022355

As has already been said, many duplicate wikis are abandoned, faltering or undeveloped. It's what I call the "I thought this would be easy and then I got bored" syndrome by a disgruntled and/or starry-eyed wannabe admin. But sometimes, the admin of the duplicate doesn't know how to shut a wiki down, sometimes they just give up and sometimes they don't even know about other wikis already in existence. I also think that CC considers ad revenue, eh? This is a business, after all, so allowing multiple wikis on the same topic is simply covering a larger demographic from that perspective. I've seen 5-page wikis with ads. Yup.

It's annoying, but if the duplicates really bug you, you do have a choice but it takes work on the part of the admin of the wiki seeking Top Dawg status. Wiki even has a protocol for it. As an admin, you visit each and every site that's a duplicate looking for signs of life by posting a message on the forum saying who you are and inviting the members of that wiki into your wiki. A week to ten days later, if there's no reply, you can request that CC close it down. That won't eliminate all of the duplicates, but it may duplicate a lot of them. Like I said, it's tedious work, but it all comes down to how badly you want it.