Long-term forces pulling a wiki apart:
Entropy increases, the original focus is lost.
Conflicts make people leave.
Subcommunities leave the wiki.
A wiki site will have an optimal size; when it grows, it will split into two sites.
How to pull it together again:
Impose structure via categories.
Foster Good Style via peer pressure and peer review.
Increase interconnectedness. Link More.
Up the fun factor to keep people, original participants and new users alike, attracted to and interested in the idea.
What happens to people:
A wiki blurs the distinction between writers and readers of a Web site (or part thereof), since readers are encouraged to become writers.
Community feeling.
The wiki collects knowledge and serves it to the Web.
Note that evolution only happens via mutation and selection: There must be changes, and there must be elimination of undesired manifestations, lest they multiply. There's plenty of change on a wiki, but there must also be selection (refactoring, social engineering) in order to improve it. Only then will there be evolution. Evolution does not apply to the software, the community, and the content equally.
Related links:
After one year, go to your Home Page, click on the title, and read some of your earliest contributions. Be amazed about how much you've learned from and about Wiki since then, and how strongly it has shaped your world-view. Be amazed about how you yourself wrote like a newbie, not understanding Wiki Style. Consider going through some of your pages to look at them with fresh eyes, possibly enhancing them with new ideas, possibly cutting down parts which don't seem so hot any longer. Consider being more gentle and supportive to newcomers, such as you once were yourself. Bless our Gracious Host.
I have been reading and occasionally contributing to this Wiki for a while... I have started my own wikis in companies where I have worked. I just came across this today and think this concept is great. There is a lot to learn about how this tool can and should be used... and we all learn little bits over time. I think the One Decade Wiki will be interesting... just a few more years to go!
If you've been regularly coming to this wiki for a year, you've probably read hundreds or even thousands of pages. You can recognize familiar Wiki Names even when they're plain text. Use that familiarity; turn those phrases into links. For example, once you know "home page" is a Wiki Name, transform it into "Home Page" when run across it. By so doing, you increase Wiki's value. And the more of Wiki you're familiar with, the more your Linking Power has to offer the Wiki Community.
See original on c2.com 