I'm creating the Business Community wiki for students at my university only. So it's a small community, but that community changes. I mean, new students coming and old students left all the time. So while it is not a big community, on-going leadership is still an issue.

So how do we pass the touch to the next generation of leaders? How do we ensure the soul of the project remains, when the originator left? What mechanism should we set up to ensure long-term functionality and ease of maintenance / extension to the project?… These questions are not easy.

Read his FAQ. By your definition of success, his server (running the same software) might be a better final place for your wiki. He will let someone else replace you if you leave and a new admin is needed to fix some things.

I haven't considered moving anything there, but for non personal traditional wiki sites, it seems like a better concept. Wikidot is more optimized for sites that belong to small communities and people I think.

I also agree completely with your definition of success.

I do not believe this is a shame. The players are the first who detect a new possibility for them. And not all of them are "cheating" .
The developers are the next group (collaboration). And than the fan of TV or movies.

Others are more knowledge based oriented and therefore depending of "input".
This is the world we live in - or some of us :) .

Such goals could be as you listed, to have a certain number of pages, editors, active members or anything. Success of a wiki is most definitely more personal based rather than as a community. A personal goal that definitely should not be a sole goal would be that of, make this much money off of Adsense. The reason that would be an utterly immoral goal, as it would probably lead to the creation of pointless pages, and endless information that does not pertain to the site given. If money was a driving goal of a wiki, then a site originally focused around music, may just be generalized way too much, to include members who wouldn't like music, like a videogame forum. No harm in having a videogame wiki, the only problem would be, your site now includes members who like World of Warcraft, and some who like Children of Bodom. You would be making almost a brand new wikipedia, which we all know, already exists.

Money isn't always a bad goal, but should never be the driving reason of creating a wiki. Personally, no matter what a person's definition of success is for a wiki, it is definitely centered around maintaing a wiki that is specific, sticks to one point, and pleases it's members by giving the information it promises to. Having such a goal to please one's members, is where a page creator's success becomes the success of the wiki as a whole.

Basically funky books.

Nicely put.

“q”, “search:site” or what?

Basically, open source information(for varying level of open). The more people involved, the more eyes can spot errors, omitted information, ambiguity, misleading information translate and so forth. In short, the more people involved, the better the quality of the information, the better the benefit for everyone. Another way to look at it is that every single contribution benefits every single contributor(this also includes viewers).

The quality of information is directly proportional to the number of people, and I believe the ultimate goal is constantly improving the quality of information.

Atleast, that is what I believe the major driving force is behind the popularity and growth of wiki's.

As humans became more sophisticad, first information was passed on orally, then in writing(cave paintings->stone tablets->clay tablets->paper scrolls and books), then print(press books->printed books->fax->internet). The majory of the history of humankind's passing and preservation of information is either inaccurate(orally) or static and having a very small 'community'(usually only one person, the author). I believe wiki's to be the next step, improving on all previous forms. A record is kept of all changes so nothing is lost, the information constantly gets improved, and it is accessible to increasing percentages of humanity at increasingly less costs.

So yeah, wiki's are basically funky books.

— Shawn

How do you know this?

— Shawn