{{short description|Wiki dedicated to online communities}} {{Infobox website | name = | logo = Meatball logo.png | logo_size = 124px | screenshot = | caption = | url = {{URL|http://meatballwiki.org}} | alexa = | commercial = | content_license = None (Content is copyrighted by MeatballWiki or respective authors.)<ref>{{Cite web|title=Meatball Wiki: MeatballWikiCopyright|url=http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/MeatballWikiCopyright|access-date=2021-07-04|website=meatballwiki.org}}</ref> | type = Wiki | language = | registration = | owner = | author = Sunir Shah | launch_date = 2000 | current_status = Active (Read-only archive from 2013 to March 2021) | revenue = }}

'''MeatballWiki''' is a wiki dedicated to online communities, network culture, and hypermedia.<ref name="ebersbach">{{cite book |first1=Anja |last1=Ebersbach |first2=Markus |last2=Glaser |first3=Richard |last3=Heigl |first4=Alexander |last4=Warta |title=Wiki: Web Collaboration |edition=2nd |publisher=Springer Verlag |date=2008 |isbn=978-3-540-68173-1 |page=430 |quote=a community that has reached cult status and that focuses on virtual communities, network culture and hypermedia}}</ref> Containing a record of experience on running wikis, it is intended for "discussion about wiki philosophy, wiki culture, instructions and observations."<ref name=Nikolic/>

According to founder Sunir Shah, it ran on "a hacked-up version of UseModWiki".<ref name="c2">{{cite web |url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?MeatballWiki |title=Meatball Wiki |access-date=2007-12-28 |date=27 March 2006 |work=C2.com}}</ref> In April 2013, after several spam attacks and a period of downtime, the site was made read-only.<ref>[http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RecentChanges RecentChanges]; first archived [https://web.archive.org/web/20130430135505/http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/WikiVolunteersNeededForHurricaneSurvivors "This page is read-only"] page.</ref> In March 2021, the site was de-spammed and reopened for editing as part of a rebuilding effort alongside Ward's Wiki and Community Wiki.<ref>Posts on meatball:MeatballToDo and meatball:SunirShah.</ref>

== Founding == MeatballWiki was started in 2000 by Sunir Shah, a forum administrator from Ontario, Canada, on Clifford Adams's Internet domain usemod.com.<ref name="WikiIndex">{{cite web |url=http://www.wikiindex.org/MeatballWiki |title=MeatballWiki |access-date=2007-12-28 |date=4 October 2007 |work=WikiIndex}}</ref> MeatballWiki was created as a place for discussion about Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb and its operation, which were beyond the scope of WikiWikiWeb.<ref name=Nikolic>{{cite book|last=Nikolic|first=Igor|last2=Davis|first2=Chris|editor-last1=Egyedi|editor-first1=Tineke M.|editor-last2 = Mehos|editor-first2 = Donna C.|date=30 Apr 2012|title=Inverse Infrastructures: Disrupting Networks from Below|chapter=Self-Organization in Wikis|publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing|page = 114|isbn = 9781849803014}}</ref> As Sunir Shah stated in the WikiWikiWeb page referring to MeatballWiki: "Community discussions about how to run the community itself should be left here. Abstract discussions, or objective analyses of community are encouraged on MeatballWiki."<ref name="c2" /> Shah created this site "as a friendly fork of WikiWikiWeb." About the Meatball project, the website says: "The web, and media like it, looks like a big bowl of meatball spaghetti. You've got content – the meatballs – linked together with the spaghetti."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/action=browse&id=MeatballProject&oldid=MeatBall|title=Meatball Wiki: MeatballProject|work=meatballwiki.org}}</ref>

== Relationship to wiki community ==

The original intent of MeatballWiki was to offer observations and opinions about wikis and their online communities, aiming to support online communities, culture and hypermedia.{{cn|date=October 2023}}

In ''Good Faith Collaboration'', Joseph M. Reagle Jr. describes MeatballWiki as "the wiki about wiki collaboration".<ref>{{cite book | last = Reagle Jr. | first = Joseph M. | author-link = Joseph M. Reagle Jr. | date = 2012 | title = Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia | publisher = MIT Press | pages = 60 | isbn = 9780262288705 }}</ref> Being a community about communities, MeatballWiki became the launching point for other wiki-based projects and a general resource for broader wiki concepts, reaching "cult status".<ref name="ebersbach" /> It describes the general tendencies observed on wikis and other online communities, for example the life cycles of wikis and people's behavior on them.<ref name="WikiIndex" /> <blockquote>What differentiates MeatballWiki from many online meta-communities is that participants spend much of their time talking about sociology rather than technology, and when they do talk about technology, they do so in a social context.<ref>{{cite conference |first1=K. T. L. |last1=Vaughan |first2=Jon |last2=Jablonski |first3=Cameron |last3=Marlow |first4=Sunir |last4=Shah |first5=Ross |last5=Mayfield |title=Beyond the Sandbox: Wikis and Blogs That Get Work Done |book-title=ASIST 2004 Annual Meeting; "Managing and Enhancing Information: Cultures and Conflicts" (ASIST AM 04) |date=2004 |url=http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM04/abstracts/114.html |access-date=2007-12-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012142728/http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM04/abstracts/114.html |archive-date=2007-10-12 |url-status=dead }}</ref></blockquote>

The MeatballWiki members created a "bus tour" through existing wikis.<ref>{{cite web|title=TourBusMap|url=http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/TourBusMap|website=meatballwiki|access-date=18 March 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sitepoint.com/print/what-is-a-wiki |title=What is a Wiki? |access-date=2007-12-28 |last=Matias |first=Nathan |date=3 November 2003 |work=SitePoint |publisher=SitePoint}}</ref>

Barnstars – badges that wiki editors use to express appreciation for another editor's work – were invented on MeatballWiki and adopted by Wikipedia in 2003.<ref>{{Cite conference| publisher = ACM| doi = 10.1145/2818048.2819976| isbn = 9781450335928| pages = 729–743| last1 = Zhu| first1 = Haiyi| last2 = Kraut| first2 = Robert E.| last3 = Kittur| first3 = Aniket| title = A Contingency View of Transferring and Adapting Best Practices Within Online Communities| book-title = Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing| location = New York, NY, USA| series = CSCW '16| date = 2016| url = https://zenodo.org/record/894626}} {{closed access}} [http://haiyizhu.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/BestPracticeTransfer.pdf Author's copy]</ref>

Evgeny Morozov of ''Boston Review'' notes that another Wikipedia norm around voting may also have stemmed from MeatballWiki.<ref>{{cite news | last = Morozov | first = Evgeny | date = November 5, 2009 | title = Edit This Page | url = https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/edit-page-wikipedia-evgeny-morozov/ | work = Boston Review | access-date = 2023-10-04 }}</ref>

== See also == {{Portal|Internet}} * History of wikis * Online community

== References == {{Reflist}}

== External links == * Official website * [https://web.archive.org/web/20140331061937/http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/MeatballWiki Official website as of March 31, 2014] web.archive.org

Category:2000 establishments in Canada Category:Internet properties established in 2000 Category:Wiki communities