I started MeatballWiki (http://meatballwiki.org http://meatballwiki.org) just over 10 years ago to wax poetically about wiki culture, codify it, and try to repr

I started MeatballWiki (http://meatballwiki.org http://meatballwiki.org) just over 10 years ago to wax poetically about wiki culture, codify it, and try to reproduce it in other environments since I thought it was superior. However, Wiki cultures have been difficult to keep sustainable let alone easily reproducible. All non-reproducing communities need both openness to attract new people faster than people leave, but closeness to protect itself from negative people. Most wikis lack an ability to close themselves off in a non-hostile manner (i.e. 'turtle mode'). You may laud the wiki culture method of keep order, but I've helped hundreds of wikis defend themselves with "soft security" (http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/SoftSecurity http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/SoftSecurity), and I found it is actually a cynical process. In terms of keeping the culture going, since wiki process is based almost entirely in social custom, it requires a lot of human energy to teach newcomers and fend off attackers. Teaching requires more effort than physical-world communities because of the low bandwidth of communication on a wiki. I think there might be a new evolution one day where some of the older wiki cultural principles will be reimagined, perhaps unknowingly, in media that has a better balance of human effort to community value. After all, healthy wikis are a wonderful experience so there is no reason they cannot continue to thrive and adapt.