Wiki

{{bronze}}{{internet}}
A '''wiki''' is a website intended to be edited by its readers. {{wpl|Tim Berners-Lee}} used to consider wikis to be the realisation of his original peer-to-peer vision for the World Wide Web, but then he tripped on acid and became obsessed with 'Solid PODs'.<ref>[https://www.inrupt.com/blog/one-small-step-for-the-web TIM BERNERS-LEE. One Small Step for the Web... SEPTEMBER 28, 2018] </ref> They were invented in 1995 by programmer Ward Cunningham; the first wiki was the Portland Pattern Repository,<ref>http://c2.com/cgi/wiki — still going, eighteen years later!</ref> a site to document computer programming design patterns. He derived the word "wiki" from the [[Hawaii]]an word ''wiki wiki'', meaning "fast".<ref>[https://www.etymonline.com/word/wiki Etymology Online]</ref>

Epistemic walled garden wikis were an almost standard crank product in the 2000s through the 2010s — ''e.g.'', [[Conservapedia]], [[PESWiki]], [[Wiki4CAM]], or [[David de Hilster]]'s multiple ghost sites. Someone cranks up a copy of MediaWiki, and fills it with self-linked essays. Perhaps fellow believers will show up, though usually, they don’t. Open editing usually lasts until the first critic, functionally defined as an editor who contradicts the founder.{{nofact}}
 
==Efficacy==
Among the various methods available to get your point across on the internet, the [[wiki]] is possibly the most cunning, if it can be kept up. Blogs need you to write something witty, incisive, or thought-provoking. Podcasts need you to say something witty, incisive, and original ''and read it out convincingly'' (useful for people who like the sound of their own voice). Wikis, however, don't need that. All you have to do is start it up... and other people ''write your content for you''. This means that you can pretend your point of view has wide support, without doing any work at all!{{efn|The downside is that if your foundation is ''too'' [[RationalWiki:Stub|shallow]], [[Not even wrong|incoherent]], and/or [[Overton window|disagreeable]] for people to even know what you're trying to say (or have any desire to hear it), very few people are likely to bother continuing to build your article.}}

Even if you have to write all the articles yourself, a casual reader might *think* that your wiki was written by lots of people and has a large foundation backing it.  Hence, they might be led to believe your opinion has a lot more support than it actually does!

==Notable English-language wikis==
There are thousands of wikis in existence, varying hugely in quality and scale. These are a few of the most well-known examples, focusing on the wikis developed for anglophone audiences or with developed English versions.

===Wikipedia===
{{main|Wikipedia}}

The 800-pound gorilla of wikis, Wikipedia consists of over seven million articles, as of February 2026. (And that's just the English version. There are another 19 million in various other languages.<ref>http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesTotal.htm</ref>) It is specifically an encyclopedia dedicated to amassing all the knowledge of the human race in one place. Its goals are not only to get this information together, but also to make it freely available. As a result, it makes extensive use of [[Creative Commons]] licensing to allow its content to be distributed. It is serious and quite dry in tone, but at least it's mostly accurate.{{nofact}}

===wikiHow===
[[File:WikiHow logo - primary 2014.png|thumb|right|wikiHow logo]]Founded in 2005, wikiHow offers information on how to do just about anything, from avoiding scams<ref>[https://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Scams How to Avoid Scams] - wikiHow</ref> to installing antivirus software<ref>[https://www.wikihow.com/Install-an-Antivirus How to Install an Antivirus] - wikiHow</ref> to reacting to an ugly baby.<ref>[https://www.wikihow.com/React-to-an-Ugly-Baby How to React to an Ugly Baby] - wikiHow</ref> Its step-by-step guides usually include illustrations and references. While anyone can start an article on any subject, articles are subject to review, and are sometimes fact-checked by experts to ensure quality.

As of 2019, wikiHow has:<ref>[https://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:About-wikiHow About wikiHow]</ref><ref>[https://www.wikihow.com/Special:Statistics wikiHow: Statistics]</ref>
* Over 200,000 articles
* Over 2 million registered users
* 18 languages of articles
* Over 30 million views on its most popular article<ref>[https://www.wikihow.com/Special:PopularPages wikiHow: Popular pages]</ref>

It's notable for its incredibly friendly atmosphere, in which even obvious trolls are politely welcomed to contribute something positive to the community (though insisting on being a jerk is a surefire way to get banned), and its bizarre illustrations on some articles (See:How to fight, How to apologize to your cat, Previous versions of How to Plan a Disney Vacation).

===Scholarpedia===
Scholarpedia is a [[peer-review|peer-reviewed]] open-access encyclopedia written and maintained by [[scientist|scholarly experts]] from around the world. Scholarpedia is inspired by [[Wikipedia]] and aims to complement it by providing in-depth scholarly treatments of academic topics &mdash; although its licence is CC BY-NC-SA, so material can't be reused by wikis under a CC BY-SA licence. Their specific peer-review process is [http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Scholarpedia:Peer-review_process found here] and articles accepted are published in the [http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Special:Journal Scholarpedia journal]. Recently, Scholarpedia has [http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Special:RecentChanges had rather few edits].

===Citizendium===

[[File:Citizendium Logo 2015.png|thumb|right|The Citizendium logo as of March 2020, even worse than their [[:File:CZ_logo.gif|beta logo]].]]

{{main|Citizendium}}

Citizendium was the original challenger to the crown of Wikipedia. Its main difference was that its editing policy was less open, requiring all users to register under their real name and allowing only "experts" to approve articles. While a decent enough idea, its attempts to define "expert" soon fell prey to [[credentialism]] — the academics were rapidly repelled, leaving room for [[crank]]s with spurious qualifications to hijack prominent articles, leading to [[pseudoscience]] topics being covered in a less than critical light. Launched at the start of 2007 with considerable mainstream publicity and claims that it would grow to rival Wikipedia's size, it grew slightly during its first year and then fizzled out. Although still limping along, it has far fewer contributors than the wiki you are reading now, RationalWiki.

===Everipedia===
[[File:Everipedia.png|right|200px|thumb|Logo]]
Long estranged and non-famous Wikipedia co-founder [[Larry Sanger|Larry Sanger's]] later wiki project with Sam Kazemian launched in 2014. Basically formed from a bastardised fork of Wikipedia — but ''on the [[bitcoin|blockchain]]!!''<ref group=note>See also:
* http://thewikipedian.net/tag/everipedia/
* https://theoutline.com/post/2369/everipedia-is-the-wikipedia-for-being-wrong
</ref>

Everipedia (portmanteau of everything and Wikipedia) presumptuously calls itself the “world’s biggest encyclopedia” (for having stolen all of Wikipedia’s entries and then adding more [[bullshit]] aligning with Larry’s deranged viewpoint Wikipedia’s [[Neutral point of view|NPOV]] wouldn’t accept) and promised that Everipedia would “change the world” far more than Wikipedia,<ref>[https://www.inverse.com/article/39088-wikipedia-s-co-founder-wants-to-use-bitcoin-tech-to-build-an-encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA COFOUNDER TELLS US HIS PLAN TO BUILD ENCYCLOPEDIA ON BITCOIN TECH] from <i>Inverse</i></ref> with the creators calling their project the “Thug Wikipedia.”<ref>[http://techrasa.com/2016/06/09/interview-founders-everipedia-aka-thug-wikipedia/ Interview with the Founders of Everipedia AKA the “Thug Wikipedia”] from <i>Techrasa</i></ref> Everipedia is different from other wikis in that upon editing an article, one will receive an IQ token. They represent votes on the system, that will give you more authority over what gets accepted into the blockchain. All edits from new editors will have to be approved by people with more IQ tokens who would also have administrator privileges without supervision automatically. Naturally, Larry Sanger has the ultimate privileges and hence the utmost control over the entire site.

However, in October of 2019, Larry Sanger abandoned the project and announced he would be starting a new wiki project called the Encyclosphere. (Just, how many failed Wikipedia forks is too much?!)<ref>https://reclaimthenet.org/larry-sanger-encyclosphere/</ref>

As “The Wikipedian” put it:-
{{quotebox| Everipedia never made a lot of sense, and neither does Encyclosphere. Each competitor lobbed criticisms at Wikipedia that ranged from valid to puzzling without making a persuasive case for an alternative. The truth is that the quotidian labors of writing, editing, evaluating, arguing, and consensus-building is the real work of creating an encyclopedia, and this is vastly more difficult to realize than starting a new website with a different philosophy about how to store the ones and zeroes.}}

=== Uncyclopedia ===
[[File:Uncyclopedia logo notext.svg|right|thumb|165px|<center> The Content-free Encyclopedia. </center>]]
Uncyclopedia, "the content-free encyclopedia", is a parody of Wikipedia. Inevitably, for a collaborative work of comedy, the quality and humour varies markedly, from some patches of excellent satire to lame nonsense propped up with tired internet memes. 

There was originally one, independently operated, Uncyclopedia hosted at uncyclopedia.'''org'''. It was bought by Wikia, which later changed its name to Fandom, and slowly assimilated over the years. It could at that time be found at uncyclopedia.'''wikia.com'''. Some users got tired of the ads, content warnings, terrible skin, and lack of site stats, and they created a fork (also called Uncyclopedia) which is now at uncyclopedia.'''co'''. Some users stayed at the Wikia/Fandom site.

In February 2019, Fandom announced the closure of its English-language version of Uncyclopedia due to its offensive content.<ref>[http://archive.ph/wzuJz Forum:A message from Fandom (archived)] – [http://archive.ph/2I2R9 archived]</ref> The Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Polish Uncyclopedias on Fandom also received takedown notices. On May 14<sup>th</sup> 2019 all the Fandom Uncyclopedia sites were closed and most of the remaining contributors joined the .co site, with others moving to uncyclopedia.'''ca''', later moved to uncyclopedia.'''com'''.

Uncyclopedia has an article about us, which appears to satirise a RationalWiki page, with vandalized edits from Conservapedians in Uncyclopedia's usual fashion.<ref>[https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/RationalWiki on the .co site], [https://uncyclopedia.ca/wiki/RationalWiki on the .ca site].</ref> They also feature a "HowTo:Play RationalTroll" page in which they encourage people to vandalize RationalWiki and provide a score sheet based on how much disruption is achieved.<ref>[https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/HowTo:Play_RationalTroll on the .co site]</ref> Some Uncyclopedia users can be found on RationalWiki, and vice versa.

===Ballotpedia===
{{main|Ballotpedia}}
An US election information site. While informative, it is not entirely unbiased. Mostly written by paid staff, with some edits by "carefully vetted" members of the public, each reviewed by staff before going live.

===SourceWatch===
{{main|SourceWatch}}

SourceWatch documents corporate and industry [[front group]]s and their [[FUD]] campaigns. It tends to concentrate on [[environmentalism|environmental]] issues like [[global warming]] [[denialism]]; however, it covers a wide range of issues related to government and corporate [[public relations|PR]].

===TV Tropes===
{{main|TV Tropes}}

TV Tropes catalogs and celebrates the many conventions, idioms, motifs, clichés, memes, and writing tools used in television, film, literature, and other fiction. Entries for each "trope" link to many others and come with an extensive list of examples since there is no notability barrier. It is almost impossible to visit the website for less than 
three
 six hours, a fact of which they are quite boastful.<ref>Munroe, R. [http://xkcd.com/609/ "Tab explosion."] ''xkcd'' 609.</ref>  They used to have articles about us<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20220903151026/https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Wiki/RationalWiki RationalWiki (Wiki) - TV Tropes]</ref> and [[Conservapedia]],<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20160723055109/https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Wiki/Conservapedia Conservapedia (Wiki) - TV Tropes]</ref> but both have since been deleted for failing their article standards. It loves almost everything, especially Joss Whedon (the wiki grew out of Buffistas.org, a fansite for ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'') and the word "egregious."<ref>You could even say that people using "egregious" on TV Tropes is...[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/Egregious Egregious].</ref>

===WikiLeaks===
[[File:WL Hour Glass Bottom.jpg|right|thumb|WikiLeaks logo]]{{main|WikiLeaks}}

WikiLeaks leaks things — embarrassing or incriminating documents and correspondence which governments or corporations do not wish to be published. Although it once used MediaWiki as its content management system and so looks a bit like Wikipedia, it eventually shied away from the wiki-style contribution method, therefore it is not really a wiki and is not publicly editable; a read-only archive of the site in its MediaWiki incarnation is accessible, however. All content is compiled by professional journalists, though anybody can submit evidence they want leaked. The founder, [[Julian Assange]], has a ''bit'' of controversy surrounding him (to put it lightly), but that does not ''per se'' mean that the information of WikiLeaks is inaccurate.

===Fandom===
[[File:Fandom.svg|right|thumb|200px|Logo used since 2021.]]
This is what Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales actually does for a living. Originally called "WikiCities", then "Wikia", then "FANDOM", and now "Fandom" not written in all caps. It moved from wikia.com to fandom.com in 2019. It hosts over a ''hundred thousand'' wikis,<ref>http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Sarah_Manley/100,000_wikis_on_Wikia</ref> almost all of which are for fans of a particular work of fiction or game. There is almost nothing that doesn't get a wiki. (Tropers call this {{trope|The Wiki Rule}}.) Some are quite popular, while some have only two or three obsessive [[argumentum ad cellarium|basement-dwelling]] editors.<ref>https://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Brandon_Rhea/Wiki_domains_will_be_changing_from_wikia.com_to_fandom.com_in_early_2019</ref>

All Fandom wikis are under free content licenses. Although staff can delete Fandom wikis for violating their terms of use, they are not usually deleted if the community gets up and leaves. Several of them were abandoned when Wikia introduced a bloody awful new skin in October 2010 and their users created new wikis elsewhere, but the ad-filled, outdated, and vandalized Fandom-hosted versions remain higher ranked on Google. Over the last few years, several more wikis have jumped ship as Fandom became filled to the brim with intrusive advertisements that make even simple navigation a challenge, and can cause slowdown or web browser crashes when read on smartphones or low-end PCs. Fandom was home to [[Liberapedia]] until April 2023. It was home to a reboot of [[RationalWikiWiki]] until staff decided that a wiki about another wiki and its users (including notorious trolls) was not something they should be hosting and deleted it. It was also home to the original [[Uncyclopedia]], which was kept up even after Fandom changed their terms of service to exclude all racist and pornographic content in 2017, but eventually got deleted in 2019.

===Liberapedia===
[[File:Liberapedia.PNG|right|thumb|No clue what the arrow pointing up means.]]
Liberapedia was a rather unique attempt to be a left-wing response to Conservapedia. After coming close to death in 2008, it moved to Wikia (now known as Fandom). It did OK for a Fandom site, but horribly for an online encyclopedia. Its main editor, and for long stretches of time its only editor, was our [[User:Proxima Centauri|Proxima Centauri]]. It only had a few thousand articles, many of which were ripped from RationalWiki and/or had nothing to do with liberalism or the site's ''de facto'' secondary mission of antitheism. They had the issues of a stub pandemic and a severe lack of active users.<ref group=note>Then again, most Fandom sites seem to either be virtually abandoned (some haven't been edited for years), run by one admin who acts as a dictator using other admins as proxies, or both (sometimes, a wiki only has one admin left active, who then proceeds to take control of the site).</ref> In a bizarre reverse of what many wikis go through when the editors leave Fandom, when Liberapedia moved ''to'' Wikia, the abandoned independent Liberapedia was higher on Google Search for about eight months.

In April 2023, Liberapedia was closed on Fandom and its new home is now on Miraheze.<ref>[https://liberapedia.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&diff=115150&oldid=115145 "The Fandom version of Liberapedia has officially closed"], Liberapedia.miraheze.org, 17 April 2023</ref>

===SJWiki===
SJWiki (from the portmanteau of SJW and Wiki) was a wiki devoted to social justice, with a similar function to RationalWiki. Though it had a minor active userbase, the wiki was eventually closed and moved to another site, which itself is inactive and appears to lacks any userbase.

===Wikitravel===
The original travel wiki. After it was purchased by Internet Brands (IB) and was converted into a for-profit advertising hellhole with corporate admins who don't give a crap about the community, it became more and more outdated and irrelevant. Nowadays it is mostly used by spambots, touts, and IB's paid admins trying to sweep the desert.

===Wikivoyage===
<strike>Irrelevant</strike> fork of even more obscure "Wikitravel" — claims to be about travel, but has "travel topics" pages about basically anything and everything even very remotely related to it.<ref group=note>For example, Wikivoyage has pages on the  [https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Roman_Empire Roman Empire] and the [https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/British_Raj British Raj] and a lengthy [https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Sunburn_and_sun_protection discussion of sunscreen] that was even previously featured on the wiki's main page.</ref> The main difference from Wikitravel is that it is run by the Wikimedia Foundation (the same folks who run Wikipedia) and is not for profit or advertisement driven. Unsurprisingly, the Wikivoyage community is bigger than that at Wikitravel. However, due to Google slapping it with a huge "fork penalty" for initially having a lot of copied content from Wikitravel, you are unlikely to find its articles — even the good ones — through most search engines. In case you want to see for yourself, [https://en.wikivoyage.org here] is a link for you.

===Wikipilipinas===
A self-styled "non-academic encyclopedia", web portal, directory, and almanac centered on the [[Philippines]] and subjects related to it. Unlike Wikipedia, the site has been lenient towards original research and notability, which, combined with some Filipinos' sense of vanity and narcissism, is definitely not a brilliant combination to be had. Gained controversy for its parent company being involved in the publication of allegedly erroneous textbooks,<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20070829010904/http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/infotech/view_article.php?article_id=84783 ''Philippine Daily Inquirer'' article about the textbook scandal]</ref> although Vibal Publishing House asserted that the project and the publishing house were operated separately. The site suffered a period of decay in recent years, with most of its edits being bizarre radio station articles from a notorious Filipino eccentric with an apparent mental condition.<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Bertrand101 Long-term abuse/Bertrand101]</ref> According to their Facebook page, the site "underwent maintenance" on December 2017, but stayed offline for several years, leading to speculation that it was quietly discontinued. It went back online in 2020 with a fresh set of content, likely as part of distance learning initiatives spurred by the [[COVID-19]] pandemic, albeit with editing restricted to a select few users, though they did accept email applications for interested contributors. Wikipilipinas went offline again for unknown reasons; the most recent post on their Facebook page is from 21 September 2022 in commemoration of [[Ferdinand Marcos]]'s proclamation of Martial Law.

===Fake Archaeology Wiki===

A "collaborative project by the students of ANP 364: Fake Archaeology - [[Pseudoscience]] & the Past, a class taught in the Department of Anthropology at [[Michigan]] State University." This site contains academic study on a variety of [[pseudoarchaeology]] topics and pseudoarchaeologists.<ref>[https://www.fakearchaeology.wiki/index.php/Welcome_to_the_Fake_Archaeology_Wiki Fake Archaeology].</ref>

===Miraheze===
Another free wiki farm which hosts about 8500 wikis.<ref>https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/FAQ#What_types_of_wikis_do_you_host?</ref>  Its main target audience is people who hate Fandom, and many of their features are about doing the opposite of Fandom.  Fandom has ads, so Miraheze has no ads.  Fandom is run by a corporation that pays people to work on it, so Miraheze is run wholly volunteers.  Fandom prohibits wiki communities from leaving, so Miraheze makes it easy for wiki communities to leave.  If you want to appeal to a Miraheze user, just do the opposite of whatever Fandom did recently.

Most Miraheze wikis are hosted on a subdomain of "miraheze.org," but some have their own domains.

====All the Tropes Wiki====
The largest wiki on Miraheze is All The Tropes, a wiki very similar to TV Tropes.  All the Tropes claims to be better than TV Tropes due to ATT not having ads as well as its commitment towards academic freedom i.e. the right to write up articles on subjects the TV Tropes overlords deem to be taboo, and claims to support "[[Refugee|refugees]]" from TV Tropes.<ref>All The Tropes:So You're a TV Tropes Refugee</ref> It's also much smaller than TV Tropes (no thanks to the fact that TV Tropes changed their licence to an incompatible one to deter further forking), so it's much less likely to have an article about your favorite obscure media.

==Crank wikis==
There are many obscure and dubious sites run by various [[crank]]s, far from the public radar, although many are well-known among RationalWiki editors, in relation to our [[RationalWiki|site's mission]].

===Conservapedia===
{{main|Conservapedia}}

Conservapedia, a very small project aiming to emulate Wikipedia from a socially [[conservative]], [[American]], and [[fundamentalist]] [[Christian]] point of view, involves several editors and administrators who had previously faced opposition to inserting their heavily biased point of view into Wikipedia articles.<ref>[http://www.conservapedia.com/User:RSchlafly Roger Schlafly]</ref><ref>[http://www.conservapedia.com/User:Ed_Poor Ed Poor]</ref> Some appear under aliases, apparently in order to distance themselves from their prior involvement with Wikipedia<ref>[http://www.conservapedia.com/User:Conservative Conservative/kdbuffalo]</ref> or possibly to fit in more with a common Conservapedia username scheme.<ref>[http://www.conservapedia.com/User:RobS RobS/Nobs/Nobs01]</ref> As a whole, the site appears to have an unhealthy fascination with Wikipedia and its supposed faults.<ref>[http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia Examples of Bias in Wikipedia]</ref><ref>[http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Differences_with_Wikipedia How Conservapedia Differs from Wikipedia]</ref> It is significant to note that many of what [[Conservapedia]] administrators consider faults in [[Wikipedia]] are [[Hypocrisy|often repeated, to a greater degree, on their own site]]. Just like Encyclopædia Dramatica, many of the editors are trolls. Unlike the trolls in ED, they are unwelcome, but it's hard to tell them apart from the real editors.

While [[War on Science|being frustrated]] in their attempts to insert a respect for real world scientific facts at Conservapedia, the founders and most of the original editors of RationalWiki "met" each other.

===Encyclopædia Dramatica===
{{main|Encyclopædia Dramatica}}

Encyclopædia Dramatica is a "lulz"-related wiki, populated largely by [[troll]]s. Article subjects included internet [[meme]]s, users of various sites and forums, and their online dramas. [[NSFL]]!

Despite being full of flashing porn ads, the site's owner claimed it failed to make much money, and it was unilaterally taken down without warning in April 2011 and replaced with Oh Internet, a worksafe version of the same idea. ED itself was resurrected by [[hacker]] Ryan Cleary soon after.

===A Storehouse of Knowledge===
{{main|A Storehouse of Knowledge}}

Just as Citizendium was a personal competitor to Wikipedia, A Storehouse of Knowledge was set up as a personal competitor to Conservapedia, promoting a "biblical worldview". Founded by (now ex-) Conservapedia user [[Philip J. Rayment]] in March 2009. It's like ''everyone'' wants their own pet wiki project. When will it end[[Law of exclamation|!?!?]] Apparently defunct, now leads to a 403 Forbidden.

===Ameriwiki===
{{hatnote|See also: [[Essay:Ameriwiki commentary]]}}
[http://archive.ph/QD9JY Ameriwiki] was another [[Conservapedia]] offshoot, founded by people fed up with the hostile control-freakery at CP.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20111114075637/http://www.ameriwiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=5033 Ameriwiki main page, Revision as of 13:36, 11 November 2011 by SamCoulter] (Archived)</ref><ref group=note>Is there no end to them?!</ref> It was created in June 2011 by the user "George Fitzgerald" following a visit to [[RationalWiki]] discussing the concept for a right-wing American Christian website that wasn't as embarrassing as Conservapedia "by being much more tolerant and accepting to editors of other [[worldview]]s, and having a radically different blocking policy".<ref name=a>[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Forum:Ameripedia%3F Forum:Ameripedia?]</ref><ref>[[User:Ameripedia/Ameriwiki]]</ref> It had over 1000 articles.<ref>[http://ameriwiki.wikkii.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=historysubmit&diff=3&oldid=1 and counting]</ref> The last project was apparently a drive to create actual encyclopaedic content; an Ameriwiki admin pirated Wikipedia's list of required articles and encouraged people to create the whole list. It initially became the latest haven for Conservapedia refugees, ranging from longtime editors such as [[Conservapedia:RobSmith|Rob Smith]] to new users who were upset with Conservapedia's [[Conservapedia:Conservative|Conservative]] and his edit spree on [[bestiality]].<ref>[[:File:Capture 0098c15468110d6fd3bdfb846cff48c22156bb45.png|See screenshot here.]]</ref>

The wiki was moved to its own domain, chaos ensued due to a single troll, the founder left and came back and left again, and three different offshoot wikis resulted in this chaos. Site owner "Sam Coulter", who took over after Fitzgerald left, ran the site until its demise, which was probably because Coulter stopped paying the bills. Only a few pages of this wiki have been archived.

Though saner than Conservapedia (which to itself is a very low standard), the site still promoted some nonsense and shouldn't have been used as a [[trusworthy]]{{sic}} source. For instance: rampant [[New Deal]] [[denialism]]; [[Global warming denialism]] and violation of [[Gore's Law]], which included saying that [[Al Gore]] [[Strawman|believes]] "the life of human beings is comparable to that of trees", and treating [[environmentalism]] like a [[Gaia hypothesis|Gaia]]-worshiping [[secular religion]]; being hilariously anti-[[Barack Obama|Obama]], such as immediately bringing up Solyndra when talking about the stimulus package and calling him "[[conservative correctness|pro-abortion]]". [[Stopped clock|At least they weren't Birthers, though.]]<ref>[https://archive.ph/fIB38 See their article on Barack Obama]: "Some conservatives have argued that there is doubt as to whether Obama was really born in the USA and therefore question his eligibility to be President, despite overwhelming evidence that he was born in Hawaii and is the legal President."</ref>

===CreationWiki===
{{main|CreationWiki}}

CreationWiki is, as the name would seem to suggest, a [[creationist]] wiki. Editing is by approved members only, and non-creationists, if they are permitted access at all, are barred from contributing to articles. The number of active editors is, thankfully, very small.

===Revolupedia===

Revolupedia is a far-left [[tankie]] wiki dedicated to upholding a "revolutionary point of view" which entails spreading "Marxist–Leninist and Maoist theory and ideology".<ref>[https://revolupedia.net/wiki/index.php?title=Revolupedia:Revolutionary_point_of_view "Revolutionary point of view"]. ''Revolupedia''.</ref> At the same time, it contains pages defending the actions and glorifying the history of [[Stalin]], [[Mao]], and other communist leaders, including denying the Red Army rape of Germany and [[Holodomor]].<ref>[https://revolupedia.net/wiki/index.php?title=Anti-communism "Anti-communism"]. ''Revolupedia''.</ref>

===Metapedia===
{{main|Metapedia}}

Metapedia describes itself as "an electronic encyclopedia about culture, art, science, philosophy and politics", but could be more accurately described as an [[echo chamber]] for [[neo-Nazi]]s to rant in. It covers somewhat controversial subjects, such as why [[homosexuality]] is a mental illness, how [[race]] is certainly a real thing, how science proves that people with dark skin are a bunch of damn dirty apes, and how [[Adolf Hitler]] was an under-appreciated visionary. It also seems to be all but dead. How sad.

===WikiSpooks===
WikiSpooks is a wiki collection of political [[conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]]. It claims to be an "encyclopedia of deep politics". On the other hand, one might call it the nutty cousin of [[SourceWatch]].

It claims that [[Wikipedia]] is [[Censorship|censored]]<ref>[https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Wikispooks:FAQ FAQ] Wikispooks</ref> and that for the [[truth]] behind anything political, you need to be on WikiSpooks.

Some articles are vaguely encyclopedic, but source checking is almost entirely absent. Many articles consist of a summary of the "Official Narrative" and then alternative views, which receive far more attention. Essentially, any reaction to the "official narrative" from western [[government]]s or corporations, are welcome. That means different articles contradict each other, as Wikispooks opposes both the Official Narrative ''and'' the Official Opposition Narrative. Essentially, as soon as some theory becomes vaguely credible and gathers some attention online from sources its contributors see as credible, it is part of the Official (Opposition) Narrative and must therefore be a lie. It doesn't really matter ''who'' is the Official Narrative. In [[World War II]], the [[Nazi]]s, [[Soviet Union|Soviets]], and Allies were all lying to us. [[Holocaust denial|The Holocaust is a lie]].<ref>The Holocaust {{cite web |url=https://wikispooks.com/wiki/The_Holocaust |title=The Holocaust |website=wikispooks.com|publisher=Wikispooks |access-date= 29 June 2017}}</ref> The Reichstag fire is [[Stopped clock|correctly]] claimed to be a potential false flag attack.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Reichstag_Fire |title=Reichstag Fire |website=wikispooks.com |publisher=Wikispooks |access-date=29 June 2017}}</ref>

Among other things, the website has room for articles alleging humans [[Moon landing hoax|did not go to the moon]],<ref>{{cite web |url=https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Moon_landings_conspiracy_theories |title=Moon landings conspiracy theories |website=wikispooks.com |publisher=Wikispooks |access-date=29 June 2017}}</ref> [[Climate denial|climate change is a lie]],<ref>Climate Change [https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Climate_change “Climate Change”] Wikispooks</ref> but also that [[fracking]] sucks and the [[fossil fuel]] industry are lying to us. The Holocaust both did and didn't happen in various ways. The [[Bilderberg Group]] probably controls both the IPCC ''and'' the oil industry, which are both bad and probably under one hood.

==Us!==
{{main|RationalWiki}}

RationalWiki is a 
large and well respected
 
very small
 modestly-sized project that was originally established to address and refute the likes of CreationWiki and Conservapedia from a rationalist point of view. As well as a wiki in an encyclopedic sense (with over 8000 content articles), it also doubles as a discussion forum. Although still attracting traffic due to its commentary on Conservapedia, RationalWiki does have a few articles that appear in the top of Google's search rankings, thanks to its almost complete lack of notability requirements to write articles about any form of crank idea<ref group=note>Having trustworthy sources to cite is still ''strongly encouraged'', though.</ref> — the equivalent criterion at RW is "[[RationalWiki:Mission|missionality]]".

==Meta-wikis==

{{hatnote|NOT to be confused with [[Metapedia]].}}

===RationalWikiWiki===
{{main|RationalWikiWiki}}

A meta wiki about RationalWiki, which spawned other metawikis.<ref>See, [[RationalWikiWiki]] and [[fun:Rationalwikiwikiwiki|RationalWikiWikiWiki]] and maybe even <span class=plainlinks>[http://rationalwikiwikiwikiswiki.referata.com/wiki/Main_Page RationalWikiWikiWikisWiki]</span>...</ref> RationalWikiWiki was closed to the public on November 14, 2012, but you can still keep track of its once furious editing pace at [[Fun:RationalWikiWikiWiki|RationalWikiWikiWiki]], and it had a pathetic reboot on Wikia (sadly now taken down). A few of its pages and talk pages were copied to here and can be found in [[:Category:RationalWikiWiki]].

===Meta-Wiki===
Meta-Wiki is a project by the Wikimedia Foundation to 
boost their ego
 document themselves. They likely would've named it Metapedia if not for, well, [[Metapedia|you know]]. 
It's the go-to wiki if you want to figure out how to do anything on [[MediaWiki]], so you'll probably have to visit it at some point
 [note: superseded by MediaWiki.org which now holds all public MediaWiki technical information]. A great tool to help you fall asleep at night and even at day.

Meta-Wiki is also great if you want to know more about the 
inner
 working of the Foundation [note: NOT the '''inner''' working which is already moved to foundation.wikimedia.org and also NOT the inner technology working which is hosted in wikitech.wikimedia.org]

==Comparison chart==
{|class="wikitable"
|-
!rowspan="2" |Wiki
!colspan="2" |Authors
!colspan="2" |Readers
|-
!Intended
!Actual
!Intended
!Actual
|-
|Wikipedia||Everyone||[[Nerd]]s, [[Wandalism|vandals]], paid editors, vandal fighters, and academics||Everyone||Everyone (with internet access)
|-
|Simple English Wikipedia||All English speakers||Nerds and people banned from English Wikipedia||People learning English||Native English speakers looking for laughs 
|-
|Wiktionary||Geeky linguists||Long-time Wikipedians||People looking for definitions of words||People who don't know about Dictionary.com
|-
|Wikibooks||People who like writing textbooks about obscure things||Long-time Wikipedians||People who like reading textbooks about obscure things||Lost people using Google
|-
|Wikiquote||People transcribing famous quotes made by famous people||People transcribing quotes from TV shows||People looking for lists of famous quotes||Nobody
|-
|Wikisource||People translating foreign-language public-domain texts to English||People copy-pasting English texts from Project Gutenberg{{refn|I mean, it was literally at some point called "Project Sourceberg".{{cn|joke}}|note|sourceberg}}||People who don't know about Project Gutenberg||More people than you think
|-
|Wikinews||Amateur journalists||Almost nobody||Long-time Wikipedians||Nobody
|-
|Wikiversity||Teachers||People only there for [[Wikipedia:m:WikiJournal|WikiJournal]]||Students||Almost nobody
|-
|Wikispecies||Amateur biologists||A few nerds||Long-time Wikipedians||Nobody
|-
|Wikidata||Nerds and data scientists||Toxic nerds, SEO spammers, and vandals who get away with it||Nobody||People without a decent Wikipedia in their first language; people who don't know about Wikipedia
|-
|wikiHow||Everyone||A lot of super friendly people, kids, specialists, [[Autism|autistic]] people, and the occasional troll||Everybody||Everybody (including a few trolls)
|-
|Conservapedia||[[Homeschooling]] conservatives||Andy Schafly, his bootlickers, and some parodists||Homeschooled pupils||People looking for laughs and some borderline [[fascists]]
|-
|Citizendium||Academics||One guy and a fringe [[pseudoscientist]] (no-one)||All humankind||No-one
|-
|TV Tropes||Amateur literary analysts||Fanfic enthusiasts and self-professed ''otaku''||All nerdkind||The authors and people with nothing better to do
|-
|Encyclopaedia Dramatica||Meme lovers, funny people, stalkers, and trolls||Unfunny people, spambots, stalkers, and trolls||Newbs and trolls||Stalkers and trolls
|-
|Uncyclopedia||Funny people||Bored Wikipedians, people banned from English Wikipedia, Unfunny people, trolls||People with a sense of humor||[[w:Wikipedia:Wikiholic|Wikiholic]] Wikipedians
|-
|Liberapedia||Parodists||[[User:Proxima Centauri|Proxima Centauri]], [[User:Rushwrj13|Rushwrj13]]||Parodists||The authors
|-
|Fandom||Community-minded people who like writing wikis||Drooling monomaniacal fanboys||Community-minded people who like writing wikis||Drooling monomaniacal fanboys
|-
|ShoutWiki||Community-minded people who like writing wikis||People who don't like Wikia||Community-minded people who like writing wikis||Only there for the "bad webcomics" wiki
|-
|Miraheze||Community-minded people who like writing wikis||Wannabe critics, people who got sick of Fandom's bullshit, and worldbuilders||Community-minded people who like writing wikis||More people than you probably think
|-
|A Storehouse of Knowledge||[[Philip J. Rayment]]||[[Philip J. Rayment]]||All Christiankind||Not even the RationalWikians
|-
|CreationWiki||Vetted creationists||Almost no-one||All Christiankind||No-one
|-
|[[Wiki4CAM]]||[[Alternative medicine]] practitioners||No-one||Alternative medicine users||No-one
|-
|Metapedia||Nazis||Assorted [[alt-right]] loners||Nazis||Antifa sometimes
|-
|Wrongpedia||People making fun of Nazis||"KATMAKROFAN"||People with a sense of humor||Probably not even KATMAKROFAN
|-
|SourceWatch||Concerned citizens||Amateur journalists, moonbats, alties, PETA nuts||Citizens in Western democracies||Moonbats
|-
|[[Psiram]]||Skeptics||A few German skeptics||Skeptics||
Skeptics who haven't found RationalWiki

|-
|Revolupedia||Educated revolutionaries||A few internet tankies||The international proletariat||Internet tankies
|-
|[http://wikichristian.org/ WikiChristian]||Christians of the world||[http://wikichristian.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=365&from=&limit=500 Almost nobody]||Christians and soon-to-be-converted heathens||Nobody
|-
|Wikivoyage||<strike>Travellers</strike> Voyagers||People who don't like providing sources; touts||Business travellers and tourists||People who are too cheap for Lonely Planet
|-
|Wikitravel||Travellllllllers||Touts spambots paid admins, people with limited English, trolls||People who don't know about the Wikivoyage fork||Nobody
|-
|-
|[[HoaxWiki]]||[[Skeptic]]s||One ranting skeptic, with the occasional odd author||General public||Those that search for [[Dutch]]/[[Belgian]] conspiracist material and stumble upon this site
|-
|[https://religions.wiki/index.php/Main_Page Religions Wiki]||[[Skepticism|Skeptics]], rational thinkers||A few anti-religious extremists||Soon to be de-converted theists||The authors
|-
|-
|[https://everipedia.org Everipedia]||Everyone||[[Bitcoin|Blockchain]] fans, paid editors whose articles got deleted from Wikipedia, and Larry Sanger||Everyone||The authors
|-
|EverybodyWiki||Everyone||[[SEO]] [[spam]]mers||Everyone||Nobody
|-
|RationalWiki||Rationalists||''Drunk'' rationalists, [[goat]] fetishists, asinine pedants, power-drunk admins constantly banning each other, people who run jokes into the ground by making them way too long||Fledgling rationalists||Cynics and goat fetishists
|}

==Wiki software==
There are lots of wiki engines out there, but most public wikis of any note use MediaWiki. (The only one listed above that doesn't is TV Tropes, which uses a version of PMWiki that has been altered and stretched over time.) This is why almost every wiki out there using its default skin ''“[[mw:Skin:Vector|Vector]]”'' looks more-or-less like Wikipedia.

Some prominent open source software sites (''e.g.'' Ubuntu, Debian, X.org) favour MoinMoin, for some reason. (In the case of X.org, because it's written in Python rather than PHP.)

==See also==
*[[:Category:Wikis]]: Wikis we have articles about.
*[[:Category:Wiki_logos]]: Wikis we have logos from.
*[[RationalWiki:Websites]]: Good, mostly nonwiki websites.
*[[RationalWiki:Webshites]]: Bad, mostly nonwiki websites.

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note|2}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

{{keyword|wikikey=Wiki}}
{{wikinav}}

[[Category:Internet culture]]
[[Category:Wikis| ]]

Categories: Internet culture, Wikis