hartnell 1187491498|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
The Wikidot Community and 400
Those of you who read the last issue of the Madman remember that I promised to reveal my Evil Plan for wikidot and that I was using 400 a bootstrap to start other wikis. Well, no one joined and there was not a single PM about the project. Immediately after, my faith in the wikidot community plummeted to zero, excepting, of course, those admins and mods that were doing such a great job. So I resigned, there was no place for me in such an apathetic community, and because the admins and mods were top-notch, there was no need for me either. The fact is, apathy kills, and it kills slowly.
I am pleased to report that 400 is dead as a doornail. Yes, I said "pleased". After 1,400+ pages, it became appearant to me exactly what wikidot can handle, as far as singular wikis are concerned. If 400 was to continue, and I included all 10,000+ pages of all my back material, plus tons of new material that was being generated, 400 would have choked everyone else. In my hubris I momentarily forgot that I am on a shared server, and resources are not unlimited.
Take for example wikipedia. To run such a large database, wikipedia requires several (read at least 25) dedicated servers with specialized tasks. Wikidot currently only has the one. The downside of this is that wikidot is not ready for mega-sites of 100,000's of pages. However, it still excels at smaller sites of 1,000 or less pages, and I think that's what the wikidot community should concentrate on. The reason for this is that the larger a database is, the more server resources it takes for a server to do anything with it. As I understand it, each wikidot wiki has it's own database, and keeping them at 1,000 pages or less should pose no problem. You can do much with 1,000 pages. This is not a hard limit, but it's what I recommend as a max target.
As I said, I am pleased to report 400 is dead as a doornail. It was an education. It proved that the wikidot community is not afflicted with killer apathy, but rather, "hands in pockets" syndrome that arises from lack of a route to take. If people are faced with two unknowns, they will chose neither. If people are not sure what to do, or how to do it, they usually do nothing, even if they are absolutely brilliant. So this has become my new mission — to cure the "hands in pockets" syndrome. This is what I should have done after establishing the admins. Sorry for the delay.
I humbly request that the return of the Madman be accepted. I have two weeks of daily material written and noted. I will be revealing my evil plan in full, excepting of course, closely guarded trade secrets. :) If the Wiki Madman seems like spam, just say so, and I will stop it immediately.
— hartnell
PS. I would like to thank the many people who contributed to 400. You rock.
