• all giving and no taking
• oblivious to changes to work you have spent hours of volunteer time improving
• ready to give in to employees who have nothing better to do than rearrange...
  

Tired of your old games where you can shoot people, decapitate them or drag them through the mud and destroy all sense of humanity? Why not go and spend time on recent changes patrol instead?

In recent changes patrol of a wiki, you'll get real time interaction with real...

Isn't it ironic how the exacting tolerance, openness and collaborative nature of a wiki results in imbalances that threaten their very existence? In the name of allowing everyone to have a go, there's a prominent wiki out there right now that is being swamped by children, aka kids.

If you have a successful wiki, watch for Wikipedia creep. It's easy to spot. One day, you have a nice and happy community. Suddenly you have an argumentative, irritable and negative community. What happened? Likely those in Wikipedia who didn't make the admin cut or get accepted as authors...

Wikis create a lot of "senses of". For example, a sense of:

• belonging
• community
• liberation
• usefulness
• intrinsic value and self worth
• blah blah blah

Wikis can also grow boring. This occurs when the...

Clarity of expression is a valuable element of wiki discourse. Saying what you think or feel openly and with clarity, frankness and no hidden subtext is crucial. But often this doesn't happen on wikis, where authors believe they are so word-clever that throwing in an innuendo or more here...

This isn't about "buying" a wiki, although that can help! This is about the "stamp" of ownership of a wiki.

There are several ways this happens:

* You own it. You plough its depths everyday and everyone knows you. Everyone picks up on what it is you want and they do...

Delicate topic this one. First you have to want to do it. Any number of reasons :

• You hate it
• It has ruined your life, sucked up your time
• The leaders of the wiki have it out for you
• You feel ignored
• Nobody sends you messages to...
  

Ever notice that the greatest whiners on a wiki are the paid workers? No? Well, then, you haven't looked closely enough.

It would be funny if it weren't so blatantly selfish and inconsiderate of all the efforts put in by the masses of of volunteers. And it becomes completely...

You can never get anything right on a wiki. Do you know why? Simple - because everybody will find fault. Here's how:

• You edit poorly - grammar, spelling etc. - immediately you are tainted
• You edit brilliantly - great grammar, flowing speech, the lot - immediately...
  

Your abusive stance against
The few who do the most
Has taken too much of a toll
Your site's about to be toast.

Grant your volunteers...

Ever dissented on a wiki only to have the highly defensive paid staff ram things down your throat? It sucks.

Tactics used by paid staff to stifle volunteer dissent include claiming some of these things:

• that you are casting aspersions on how hard they work for...
  

Sometimes you try to make wiki friends with the best of intentions. At other times you make strategic wiki alliances for one reason or another. Remember this: whatever reason you made wiki friends, the online world is a strange place and the pieces quickly fall apart when things are always...

Some wikis have very strong personalities.  Sometimes these personalities take over the site and identify with it. On occasion, this identification is so strong that it is hard to tell where the person stops and the site begins; and the media identifies this character as the wiki itself...

Does it really matter which wiki you wiki on?

Yes, it does. Some wikis are more "you" than other wikis. Some wikis are less so. Only you will know this.

It isn't time to name wikis. Only to tell you what to watch for:

• Confrontational forums
...

This is probably the most enjoyable activity on a wiki.... not.

If you foolishly agreed to become an administrator on a wiki because you felt this would better the world, you are in for a major shock. Being an administrator is basically about being seen as Mr Kick-Butt, Madam...

If you begin a wiki with good faith and great intent, does this keep being your driving ideal?

It is possible but improbable if your wiki site takes off and becomes popular, cited and lauded by the media.

In every wiki there is a moment when there is a "switch". When...

The monkey is throwing a party and the nuts are everywhere. Just how bananas is that?

So, who or what is the wiki monkey? It's the nonsense factor in a wiki. It's when good quality gives way to poor quality on these grounds:

• freedom of speech
• freedom...
  

Togetherness under a wiki is all very well but... it doesn't really last, does it?

Consider these wiki examples of what begins to happen:

• Users abuse the concept of what "the community wants" to promote what the user in question wants; every other wiki user is...