One of the great things about a wiki is the way structure emerges
organically. Rather than imposing rigid "top down" hierarchies,
taxonomies, and ontologies a wiki enables people to organize ideas and
conversations in ways that make sense to them. The structure emerges
and over time, and is constantly evolving.
Like any organic process, however, it can be messy. There will be
duplicate pages with slightly similar names, links to nonexistent
pages, pages that aren't linked to, and so on.
So it's helpful to do a little "gardening"--pruning, tending, and
cleaning up the wiki as it grows. The objective of good gardening is to
lend the wiki some shape, but not kill it with rigid rules or
taxonomies.
To see how to garden, go to Wiki Gardening Tips

Why not call this just editing. Or, for the geeky inclined refactoring ?

contributed by Sam Aparicio on Jan 28, 2005 9:42pm

Because not everyone is so geekily inclined. Also, the actual act of "editing" is only part of the "gardening" process.

contributed by Andy Lester on Jul 30 2:49pm

Has anybody formally defined wiki gardening yet? Maybe even in a scientific publication?

contributed by me on Aug 20 5:15pm