There is a metric butt-ton of ‘alternative’ wikis, but occasionally one manages to gather a critical mass of interesting, amusing, or bizarre content, and hence to transcend simply being a refuge for those spurned by Wikipedia editors with the temerity to claim that the term ‘boring gay midget’ is unencyclopaedic.
As we all know, a wiki is a site which allows anyone to add articles, and also to edit articles, even those written by other people. This kind of power gives people a warm fuzzy community feel and can make a site very popular in no time at all.
Alas, popularity can be a curse, namely that of what I would call wiki entropy—a piece of writing edited by dozens is gonna lose pretty much all of the coherence of the original. In other words it turns to complete shit. See creationism, a prime example of why it is often better to link to a particular revision of a wiki article, so you know it won’t change.
It is pretty obvious which side of the creationism debate the author is on, but the subtlety, avoiding bitterness and abuse, makes for a far more acerbic and witty piece. Since it’s a wiki, people see an opportunity to contribute their own funnies, but the result only ends up introducing disorder, much like the retelling of a joke.
A lot of the time the enhancements are tasteless humour; sex, bodily functions, and all that. Being shocking is a lot more difficult when it’s written. Your audience probably isn’t going to read your poofter joke in the same hilarious cadence as you imagined it, and you’ll just end up looking like a homophobe.
Most times though, people simply mistake subtle humour for sarcasm. This is an easy mistake to make, but they simply aren’t the same thing.
Another article on Tom Cruise demonstrates how a deliciously absurd, thinly-veiled ridicule of Scientology turns into a confusing rant where you almost need a magnifying glass to find the laughs.
I’m positive that wikis (or some similar technology) are the future of collaborative Web-based e-parody. But subtlety, people, that is the key.