WikiSmells

In XP, people detect Code Smells when the code is going into technical debt. Similarly, Wiki pages start exhibiting WikiSmells when they grow to long or fat or messy.

In either case refactoring is recommended:

Length - when it takes too many scrolls to see what's at the bottom, it's time to summarize (chop some old discussions to a subordinate page) leaving a WikiWord reference to the removed material.
Currency - when the material gets too dated: "I wonder what will happen this November 12, 2001" It gets hard to spot the kernels of idea between the chaff.
Too many disjoint threads of interaction on the same page.
...other WikiSmells?

The idea is to make modular sub pages with better cohesion and lower coupling... (Sounds familiar, somehow.)

--BobLee 2003.04.25

The person who smells the smell should fix it, not complain about it.

KeithRay 2003.09.21

Precisely. That's what I've been doing for three years now on this wiki. If more people did that, (and not too many overdid it, as I did), our wiki would smell like a fresh spring day. - JerryWeinberg 03.09.22

Updated: Tuesday, September 23, 2003