The only times I’ve heard about RationalWiki have been on Less Wrong. I’m not really sure what the point is; the wiki format is not really suited for reading as entertainment and to discover unknown unknowns, it’s really not suited to community building and socializing, and the topic space is too narrow (as compared to Wikipedia or a Google search) for focused research. Those are pretty much my only use cases; it ends up in the same niche as the Less Wrong wiki, which I never use either.
There’s another problem, which is that there’s no good filtering mechanism there to decide what’s worth reading—there’s no upvoting, nor even visible author names. Notice that, when this article complains about some content on it, the complaints are directed at RationalWiki as a whole rather than at one particular person who writes there. And it pretty much has to be, because you have to dig into edit logs to get the author names, and that’s not practical if you’re just looking for something to read. The Less Wrong wiki would have the same problem, but it at least is made of mostly links, getting you to articles with scores and author names so you can decide what’s worth reading.
the wiki format is not really suited for reading as entertainment
The wiki format is definitely suited for reading as entertainment for some people. I can compulsively read for hours on TvTropes to slack off, and there is a name for that behavior which has been linked on TvTropes:
The only times I’ve heard about RationalWiki have been on Less Wrong. I’m not really sure what the point is; the wiki format is not really suited for reading as entertainment and to discover unknown unknowns, it’s really not suited to community building and socializing, and the topic space is too narrow (as compared to Wikipedia or a Google search) for focused research. Those are pretty much my only use cases; it ends up in the same niche as the Less Wrong wiki, which I never use either.
There’s another problem, which is that there’s no good filtering mechanism there to decide what’s worth reading—there’s no upvoting, nor even visible author names. Notice that, when this article complains about some content on it, the complaints are directed at RationalWiki as a whole rather than at one particular person who writes there. And it pretty much has to be, because you have to dig into edit logs to get the author names, and that’s not practical if you’re just looking for something to read. The Less Wrong wiki would have the same problem, but it at least is made of mostly links, getting you to articles with scores and author names so you can decide what’s worth reading.
The wiki format is definitely suited for reading as entertainment for some people. I can compulsively read for hours on TvTropes to slack off, and there is a name for that behavior which has been linked on TvTropes:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WikiWalk
RationalWiki is a wiki because it was made with the sole intent to make fun of Conservapedia.