User:Toughpigs

Danny Horn Founder of Muppet Wiki and Tough Pigs

I'm going to use this page to write down some of my thoughts about working on a small, niche wiki. This isn't for anything in particular, just a place for me to organize my thoughts. If anybody reads this page and wants to comment, please feel free to post on my talk page! I'd love to hear other people's ideas about this stuff.

Small wikis are different
Small wikis aren't the same as Wikipedia. Wikipedia has over 26,000 contributors every month. Muppet Wiki has around 50 contributors. 26,000 isn't just "50, but bigger". It's a whole different level of complexity.

A small wiki is the size of an office. Wikipedia is the size of Sandusky, Ohio.

That means that a small wiki has different priorities and a different structure, and it needs different rules. "They do it this way on Wikipedia" is not a good way to run a small wiki.

The individual contributor
The biggest difference between a group of 50 and a group of 26,000 is that a small group needs to value each individual much more highly.

An individual contributor doesn't mean that much on Wikipedia. The top five Wikipedia contributors could all take a month-long vacation at the same time, and it wouldn't make any difference to the project as a whole. If one person drops out of the project -- even a long-time, knowledgeable, valued contributor -- then there's still hundreds, even thousands, who could take that person's place.

On a small wiki, each individual is important. The top contributors on a small wiki are probably the administrators. They're the people who understand the structure. They're the institutional memory. They're probably the people who mentor new contributors, and help to referee disputes. If you lose an active contributor on a small wiki, there isn't necessarily anybody there to take that person's place. If you lose two or three of the most active contributors, then your wiki is in big trouble.

The other side of that coin is that an individual can also do a lot of damage to a small wiki. A vandal can't do much to harm Wikipedia -- the database is too big, and there's plenty of people who enjoy finding and reverting vandalism. On a small wiki, there aren't as many people around to clean up the damage. One determined vandal can frustrate and exhaust the most active contributors, and in some cases, might cause them to drop out of the project.

Therefore, you need to pay attention to each individual on a small wiki. Each contributor needs encouragement, mentoring, and appreciation. Vandals also need to be treated much more seriously.

Anonymity
people like anonymity / social experiences

anonymity is a "right"?