I've enjoyed reading Rand's recent posts about Wikipedia.

Like the rest of you, I've watched Wikipedia grow over the last few years into a massive authority site which ranks in the top SERPs for just about anything you care to think of.

Wikipedia got a lot of link juice from an emergent Blogosphere. Bloggers in need of a quick definition would link to the Wikipedia page in question. Multiply that technique..oooh...70 million times and you've got an SEO goldmine:

1. Targeted keyword text
2. Deep links to wiki entries
3. Massive quantities of quality inbound links from different source
4. Well-optimized templates making best use of titles and headings
5. And don't forget the excellent interlinking between articles that goes on within Wikipedia

Let's put it this way, if you were to run AdSense on Wikipedia for a week, it'd likely surpass your annual salary a few times over.

What I want to explore in this post is, why aren't wikis more prevalent, especially in niche areas where there might be demand for an authority site? 

Where Are All The Wikis?

Despite the SEO community being generally at the forefront of traffic-driving trends, Wikis are still a taboo subject. Nobody talks about them much. Yet one of the biggest sites in the world right now is a wiki.

Let's say you create a high-profile and authoritative wiki on - lemme see - Fly Fishing. No-one else is doing a Fly Fishing wiki, so you're the only one. You build it up, spread the word to other wader-wearing bloggers. They contribute their expertise and additionally link back to the wiki.

You'd effectively be creating the authority site for your niche. If you can pull it off. Here's a few reasons why I think wikis haven't achieved widespread popularity:

1. Fear of the wiki: People are more comfortable with personal publishing in the form of blogs. Wikis have their own 'language' and they appear to be a lot more complicated to set up.
2. No mainstream acceptance: No-one else is using wikis, everyone's still talking about blogging. Wikis are almost at the point blogs were 3-4 years ago. I'm not sure, but does the wiki platform have the community and theme support behind it that say WordPress does?
3. Harder to monetize? I think because Wikipedia runs as not-for-profit, the perception of wikis is that they should becreated for altruistic reasons. I sort of agree with this - advertising may cheapen the look of the site and raise doubts about the quality of the content.
4. Harder to moderate? We've all heard the stories of egotistical flame wars between Wikipedia moderators. Perhaps some shy away from wikis because they simply don't want the hassle of dealing with conflicts.

I'd love to hear the opinions of others as to why wikis aren't achieving mainstream status. Or perhaps you know some examples of good quality wikis like the last.fm artist database? Maybe you run a wiki in a particular niche?