Wikipedia:Walled garden
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- WP:WG redirects here. For WikiGuard, see WP:WikiGuard.
In wikis, a walled garden is a set of pages within a wiki that are intended for the private use of an individual or group. Many wikis do not permit users to set up such walled gardens, and the wiki's contributors will often make efforts to dissuade such behaviour. Users who attempt to create walled gardens will often be instructed to set up their own wiki on their own server or use a wiki farm.
The term can also be understood to mean a series of pages or articles in a wiki which have extensive interlinking within the group, but none of the pages link to or from anything outside that group.
When applied to the web as a whole, the term walled garden is used to describe a site that requires a username and password to enter, such as a paid content site; or a site that limits which content users can access, such as a kids' site. A common motivation for creating walled gardens online is to boost competitive advantage; the technique can make it easier to control where visitors browse. Some ISPs, such as Mediacom, use walled gardens to ensure that only a certain server's content is available to unverified users.
Walled gardens are a controversial feature of the web, because many web surfers do not want to be limited in their explorations.
