Walled garden



In technology, a walled garden is a closed ecosystem, analogous to the traditional horticultural meaning, where for example only pre-approved apps can be installed. Walled gardens are common in communities that cannot tolerate dissent or which have a strong resistance to outside input.

In a wiki, a walled garden refers to a closed circle of pages which reference only each other.

The subject is relevant to the study of cults, where it is common to pressure adherents to only associate with fellow cult members and to cut off contact with dissenting family members and others who might be sources of differing views than the cult's teachings; to propaganda and governments which discourage or make it illegal to access news sources outside government-approved channels; and to pseudosciences which cite only to each others' non-peer-reviewed journals.

Examples
Cold fusion advocacy is a classic walled garden: a small number of individuals running their own conferences, their own websites and journals, talking to each other, but rarely if ever engaging the mainstream at all. WikiWikiWeb summarises this neatly as "isolated little worlds".

North Korea is perhaps the most obvious example of a walled garden imposed by its own government. Communist Albania was also such a case, particularly in the post-China period until the death of Enver Hoxha.

The Lyndon LaRouche movement and its front groups are another example. LaRouche publications cite almost exclusively other LaRouche publications as well as Lyndon LaRouche's writings and speeches, creating an ideology which is internally consistent to its adherents even though it contains many views that are simply absurd to the outside world.

Creationism and creationist advocacy are often walled gardens, exclusively citing other creationist writings and the Bible, and addressing outside criticism by regurgitating the same PRATT arguments over and over.