WikiIndex

WikiIndex is a wiki aiming to list and categorise all existing wikis, as well as provide information on the topic of wikis, including people, software, and ideas. It uses MediaWiki and listed more than 21'000 wikis as of May 2019, making it the most successful endeavor of its kind.
History
WikiIndex was created in 2006 by software developer John Stanton, wiki activist Mark Dilley, and Internet entrepreneur Raymond King. Mark Dilley had started the SwitchWiki project in 2002, aiming to list all existing wikis alphabetically, while John Stanton and Raymond King had created WikiIndex.com in 2005 as a way to track the wikis they thought had value for them. All three met in October 2005 at the WikiSym conference in San Diego, and decided to join their efforts. The SwitchWiki project and early parts of the current WikiIndex project were documented on MeatBallWiki.. The project moved from domain name WikiIndex.com to WikiIndex.org in January 2007.
Relevance for the study of wikis
In their 2011 article "Analyzing the wikisphere: Methodology and data to support quantitative wiki research", Jeffrey Stuckman and James Purtilo choose not to use WikiIndex, because it they deem as unclear whether the information on wikis was compiled by humans, which could result in a selection bias in their corpus.
In his 2013 PhD thesis, Andrew G. West considers WikiIndex, « an open directory of 10,000+ wiki instances », to be « accurate and representative » of « wikis across the Internet » (pp. 11-12). He uses the wiki to draw statistics on unregistered and registered editing in wikis, the popularity of wiki engines, and make general claims about popular wiki themes (p. 12).
Similar projects
A similar project, The Wiki Wiki is available in Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian and English. Each version lists a few hundred wikis (except the Serbian version), mostly in the corresponding language.

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