A Quick Look at WikiMartialArts

This time around I wanted to take some time to look at a particular wiki. Wikis are remarkable for quite a few reasons, and are particularly great at bringing together a wealth of information on what would have been an obscure topic. This makes active wikis ideal for tracking and discussing the varying martial arts around the world. The wiki I want to talk about is simply called WikiMartialArts, and may be found here. The wiki itself seems relatively active, and has had over 700 articles contributed to it since 2006, no small feat.

This particular wiki is extremely flush with information. I spent a fair amount of time searching for a decent martial arts wiki besides Wikipedia, and this is definitely the most robust I've come across. Not only does the wiki attempt to cover martial arts styles themselves, but it attempts to encompass everything martial arts. It goes over movies, big personalities, literature, even pop culture. It has a huge list of martial arts broken down primarily by country as well with some basic (and sometimes lacking) information on most all of them. It contains widgets on the front page that show interesting facts and recent news. And of course it is packed with information in each of the pages. Navigation is made pretty smooth by a navbar on the left, though it could suffer some restructuring of its own. There is also a decent amount of pictures on the site, and the media works to bring it a splash of color that sparks more interest than the blank sterility of text. Add to this the fact that the overall layout is very similar to Wikipedia (similar enough to make me double check the url) and you have a wiki that is chock full of information, fairly well organized, and instantly familiar to those that have ever dealt with the wiki scene.

So, with all this good here, does this wiki exemplify exactly how an ideal wiki works?

Not exactly. Unfortunately there are glaring sections that are missing and/or have been vandalized and left in their decrepit state. For instance, at the time of this writing the entire list of Chinese martial arts is completely vacant, overwritten with an Ambien ad. That said, I don't find this an irredeemable flaw. The wiki has a code of conduct to help guide those generous souls willing to help, and no source of open ended collaborative work on the internet is safe from trolls and bots. If anything, this actually endears me to the site. It makes me want to spend a few moments of time to try and correct these flaws. The intention behind the wiki is powerful, but there are certainly some other issues as well. The flow of the front page is obstructed, while it is informative its almost claustrophobic with the amount of widgets and content packed onto it and it could benefit greatly from a more fluid approach. Even so, with is familiar Wikipedia structure its not at all impossible to navigate and, being a wiki, is certainly not immutable.

All in all, despite some general flaws - many of which are common to somewhat secluded wikis - the WikiMartialArts is a great site for all information martial arts. Not only that, but there is plenty of room to expand and there will always be a wealth of information to share.