Forum:Optimal Wikia Size

Wikia - creating communities

Contents 1 What's the optimal Wikia Size? 1.1 Stepping out of the nursery 2 Amount of Content 2.1 Random thoughts

[edit] What's the optimal Wikia Size?

Ok, I suspect that there is no one size that is right for all Wikia, but that said, I also believe that Wikia that are not active enough tend to die out and that ones that are "too big" need to work out ways to be more comprehensible and can get very intimidating.

So, what do you think? Size can be measured in a variety of ways including

• activity
• number of articles
• number of active contributors
• number of visitors
• percentage of overall community

or some combination or ratio of these simpler measures.

--CocoaZen 17:09, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Can you give an example of what you mean by "too big"? I can only think of a couple on Wikia that would qualify as big, but I don't find them intimidating or incomprehensible. I haven't seen one yet that I would call "too big". Can you explain what you mean? -- Danny (talk) 23:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

It's quite possible that there is no such thing as "too big" for a Wikia. But, there is definitely a size at which multiple mechanisms (like portals or extensive categories, templates etc.) are created to handle the size and organizational issues. See the Wikipedia for some examples. It has also had to come up with different strategies to handle vandalism and monitor changes. I think it's done so successfully, but I am also aware of people who will not participate as contributors because they see it as too complex a process (not the actual editing), but the overhead (guidelines, style, etc.). Wikipedia is clearly "successfull", but it has had to change in response to growth. If you look on the Wikipedia list of people who have "left", you can see that some of them gave the large size and loss of community feeling as a reason. At this point, none of the Wikia are anywhere near as large as the English Wikipedia, but the same principals could apply. It's also possible that Wikia are more community oriented, so keeping a feeling of community is more important?

My question was also about a minimum. For instance, I suggest that any Wikia without at least 2 edits a week will become inactive. Also, a Wikia needs to get at least 3 active participants and over 250 articles before it becomes truly "self-sustaining" with a community to take care of it and a "flavor" of it's own. (I can think of counter examples, but I propose this as a starting point for discussion.)

--CocoaZen 03:03, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

That's true, I've found Wikipedia to be intimidating, which is one of the reasons I've found Wikia so attractive. Of course, Wikipedia has about 26,000 active contributors a month. If you look at Wikia's stats, even the largest Wikia are nowhere near that -- Uncyc has about 650 active contributors a month, Wookieepedia about 350, Memory Alpha about 125.

Looking on the stats page, it seems like most of the wikis that hit 10 contributors are still doing okay. In general, it seems like if you can hit double digits for a few months in a row, then the wiki works; if you can't, then you go into decline. However, there's a chicken and egg problem with that conclusion -- Is a wiki successful because it has more contributors, or does it have more contributors because it's successful? -- Danny (talk) 10:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that there is possibly no such thing as too big. Wikipedia can be very unfriendly and even intimidating, but for what it is trying to achieve, it does very well to have as many contributors as it does. Perhaps specialist Wikia with a more limited scope would do better with less contributors?

Our wikis are more like small community Villages rather than the sprawling city that is Wikipedia. I've just added a bunch of features to aid communication as a wiki grows larger. (This is copied from my Wiki, but some of these features are very, very useful for a fledgling community)

* Discussion Forum General Forum - Only up for a couple of days but already in use.

* Active Talk Pages: Search

* Psychology Wiki IRC (live chat-room) irc://irc.freenode.net/wiki-psy

* Remember you can add pages you are interested in to your watchlist

* Some of us are using MSN, see peoples user pages for details.

* Use the Recent Changes to see what your fellow contributors have been up to.

I think that the number of quality articles reflects how good your Wiki is, which in turn reflects how many contributors you've got. Increasing the number of good articles and awareness of them will in turn increase the number of Visitors, which will in turn increase the number of contributors. I think its both the chicken AND the egg in reality.

As far as the critical number of contributors goes, I'd say enough people to edit the Wiki every day means it will almost certainly survive in the long term. Even committed contributors get tired and need a break now and then, and if there are not enough contributors to keep it active while they are away, then the Wiki can appear to be 'dead' to outsiders, especially Wikipedia users.

I think Danny's right that about 10 contributors is a good sign, but overall I'd say that maybe something like 25+ committed contributors, by the end of the first couple of years, are required in the long term. Mostly Zen (talk) 11:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stepping out of the nursery

From various conversations, it sounds like the character of a Wikia changes and becomes more self-sustaining at about 1,000 articles and at least 5 regular contributors making on average at least a few edits a day. Before that, it needs much attention to seeding and gathering a few dedicated contributors (potential admins). After that, there's still work to be done (advertising, getting a wider set of contributors), but the risk of being abandoned seems to go down dramatically. Comments? --CocoaZen 01:25, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

My guess is that 3 regular contributors is enough to get a wiki moving in the right direction. Two people makes it feel like a pair of friends; it's a closed system. Three people who all work well together is a team. Three feels like a group that a new person could enter and feel welcomed. -- Danny (talk) 11:26, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amount of Content

Someone pointed out recently, that it's not just number of articles. We use that as a loose way of measuring how much needs to be done to reach a "critical mass". But really, one of the things that helps a Wikia "take off" is enough content that it is found in Web searchs.
Probably another critical feature is having enough information that new users can find things that are already there which are interesting to them.
This is a case where "size matters", but quality does too.
--CocoaZen 16:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Random thoughts

I seem to remember someone, somewhere came up with a figure of about 150 for the optimum size of a real life, non-virtual community - something to do with the way our brains have evolved to date.

There's the idea that our minds will evolve differently from now on, so that what has applied in the past isn't always a 100% reliable guide to the future.

Optimum surely depends in part on the nature of the topic in question. So for example, for a wikia concerned with the whole planet even 150 regular contributors looks small beer.

Within any community won't there be some (and the more there are in the community the more likely there will be at least some), who take more naturally to the social networking side of things than others, so that communities of communities become possible, not just theoretically but actually. Isn't that what the central wikia is in a way? And is there any reason why other individual wikia shouldn't also become or aspire to become, a community of communities?

If on the wiki I founded I ever got to 150 regular contributors I'd be deliriously happy! But I really don't see any reason to stop there.

As more and more wikia will soon be coming up to their second birthday maybe there'll be more interest in how to make wiki more self sustaining? Personally, (imho if you like), I still think there's much too much fragmentation - so that many wikia that start separate flounder when together they'd have a far greater chance of reaching critical mass.

If one of the challenges is how to make larger, or more longer established wiki have a less intimidatory feel about them, (and it seems ot me that this is a very real need, especially for topics such as sustainability that have no trouble at all in appearing intimidatory to start with) then are there any actual practical ideas to counteract this?

One idea I tried - total failure 'cause no one's ever used it! - was a sort of 'Quick Notes' page - so's people wouldn't have to worry about where to put things. Something a bit like the scratchpad idea I suppose. Do we need more spaces for more rambling, unstructered, less coherent contribution's like this one (so far)? Philralph 15:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)