Wiki Community Evolution

The development of Wiki Cultures seem to always follow the rules of MeatBall Wiki, a research group who study online communities and their development and evolution based in Canada. Wikipedia and several other wiki projects have been the subject of intensive study for many years, beginning with Usenet Forums.

MeatBall Wiki's first law of Wiki Evolution States:

Wiki based open collaboration communities always follow the same course of development, no matter where they start or what ideology they embrace. It has been said that all Operating System designers will eventually evolve any divergent Operating System Model into Unix similar to the Evolutionary convergence of carcinization with King Crabs and other Deep Sea Arthropods that all have adapted a common and simple design. The same can be said of any developing Wiki Community. No matter where they start, in order to achieve critical mass, social convergence will always limit the attempts, and the outcome will be no different than what has evolved into Wikipedia. Collapse is the inevitable outcome as the social ties become more critical to maintain a cohesive structure than the mission or content itself.