This is a theoretical paper about the issues hindering the success of virtual heritage infrastructures,particularly in regards to the seldom-discussed problematic relationship between documentation and interaction.A virtual heritage model may be considered successful if it has not only a long-life, but if it also continually engages the intended audience in line with the motivations driving its creation.Yet despite two decades of research and advancing technological sophistication, and notwithstanding the widespread proliferation of virtual heritage conferences, there has not been commensurate advances in interaction techniques, standardized evaluation metrics and survey data, or accessible and comprehensive infrastructures and related scholarly and community-based resources that provide, maintain and link to the showcases and prototypes described in academic publications.This paper suggests these issues arise due to a more fundamental problem, the design, maintenance and circulation of the digital models themselves, and how they could and should link between an interactive experience and the documentation required to communicate, debate and preserve archival and scholarly resources.To address at least some of these problems, the virtual heritage community needs to debate and adopt a scholarly ecology (an overall system and community that provide feedback,management and impact for virtual heritage research).Such a strategy requires political coordination and social organisation beyond the scope of this paper,but it will outline some more technical proposals that may help address the above problems.