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In the news

The Decline of Wikipedia, and more

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By Saqib Qayyum and Phoebe

WSJ & the decline of Wikipedia

The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article about Wikipedia on Monday, 23 November. The story, written by Julia Angwin and Geoffrey A. Fowler, is subtitled "Volunteers Log Off As Wikipedia Ages" and focuses on a decline in participation by editors. According to the story, "Volunteers have been departing the project ... faster than new ones have been joining", quoting data by Felipe Ortega, a researcher of Wikipedia who recently wrote a dissertation on comparing contributors across language editions of the site. The article also quotes research by Ed Chi of PARC (see previous story) about occasional contributors' edits getting deleted. The article writes that "Wikipedia's popularity has strained its consensus-building culture to the breaking point", but also writes about the WMF's goals to increase contributor diversity, including starting the "Bookshelf" public outreach project (see previous story).

The article also quotes Ortega, Anikut Kittur (a researcher at Carnegie-Mellon who recently presented his work on participation in Wikipedia at the WikiSym conference), Nina Paley, Sue Gardner, Jimmy Wales, Kat Walsh, Samuel Klein, Andrew Lih, Frank Schulenburg and Mathias Schindler.

There is also a blog post about the topic, and a video interview with the reporters. Julia Angwin also interviewed Andrew Lih, author of The Wikipedia Revolution, and that video interview is also posted. Lih also discusses the topic (and asks for comments) in his blog.

The story was picked up by several other outlets, including CNET and Gawker.

On the Foundation-l mailing list, Felipe Ortega commented that " ... even though the numbers doesn't [sic] seem really good for the sustainability of the project in the long term, I struggle daily to fight against fatalist claims or headlines speculating about the end of the project", pointing to his recently published interview with the Strategy Project for an explanation why the causes might not necessarily be negative.

Briefly

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  • Since the Wall Street Journal participates in Google's First Click Free program, you can read the full article for free by searching through Google and then clicking on the WSJ link. AxelBoldt (talk) 16:43, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • What the WSJ article missed in discussing the phenomena of why Wikipedia is losing contributors can be summed up in one word: "crowdsourcing". This is why it is a bad thing. And treating any Wikimedia project as an exercise in crowdsourcing is condemning it to a slow, but inevitable death -- as one former WMF Board member had the insight to point out. -- llywrch (talk) 17:45, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Many people whose personal and family economies are in difficulty need more time for working and for retraining, and can afford less time and money for Wikipedia. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I thought it was a great article, summing up the issues nicely. A huge proportion of new content is deleted on sight as a matter of principle, something that did not happen when the project started and there was considerably more community spirit. A stub used to be a marker for people to improve content, now it's a flag for a deletionist to remove it immediately. Without some muting down of the deletionist faction, I think the Wiki's decline in editor numbers will increase without bound. Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • From the WSJ article ""The number one headline I have been seeing for five years is that Wikipedia is dying," The Nay-sayers have always been predicting the demise of Wikipedia, right from the start. First it was "this will never work, people wont contribute" When that was shown to be wrong it became "you have no way of knowing if the information is correct or not" and that was shown to be a hollow complaint. Next we had "Wikipedia is hostile to experts", I dont know if anyone ever demonstrated that to be anything more than fiction in the first place. Now, low and behold, its "Wikipedia is hostile to newbies". Once we've shown that to be either invalid, unimportant, or an actual problem that we can work around, you can expect another "wikipedia is dying because of X" Dont worry too much about this particular prediction of imminent doom. Bonewah (talk) 19:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It really comes down to this: so many editors in the past came to articles that didn't exist, so they excitedly created one. Eight years after WP began, we now have essentially covered much of everything there is to cover. Now it comes down to the dedicated editors that plan on making these articles better by sourcing, and nominating for upgraded status. Many of those early users don't have the patience to source, just add hearsay. So yes, those editors did a good job of starting us off with stubs, but it's now time for the real editors to bring these articles up to snuff. That's not a bad thing. upstateNYer 23:01, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • To get more editors to stay there needs to be more stuff to edit. Without unified watchlists people can't easily watch all the stuff they might edit on the various Wikimedia Projects. So other than the Commons those other projects languish. There is no reason Wikimedia couldn't do a much better Open Directory Project, and many other projects that have been proposed but not implemented due to lack of funding, and lack of unified watchlists. We need money to pay developers to implement all the software and servers necessary for additional projects. The funding for all this is key. Unhappy editors do not donate as much though. If they had more to edit, there would be more happy editors donating. Opt-in ads could help with the funding. See Wikipedia:Advertisements. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:52, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • For those interested, the BBC covered this topic today as well. External link: [1] It is a BBC blog though, not an official BBC news article. --Taelus (talk) 17:34, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that the deletionist problem is increasing. I've been an editor since 2005, and just recently have come across a number of things I was looking for, and after I thought nobody had written an article on it I found later it had been deleted, in spite of various users support. One example is CyanogenMod, a Google Android mod that got a wave of media attention. But it is so disheartening to have a collaborative work that you've spent time on deleted with curt and cold treatment. -kslays (talk • contribs) 18:14, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with that too - I know many people who wanted to become editors, but as their first article was deleted they gave up and left. TubularWorld (talk) 20:18, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you knew these people why did you not lead them by the hand through the minefield of article writing. I have written many articles over the last two years, (none better than start class yet), but would have given up but for the patience and understanding of a few veterans. I also edit a lot, corrrecting mistakes, improving grammar or syntax and adding stuff. Sometimes the reaction to my edits can be strong as I tend to be a unilateralist and not canvass opinion, however I do not enter into edit wars and if someone wants to revert some of my edits, so be it.Petebutt (talk) 18:53, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The WSJ article includes a graph which most readers would interpret as showing a precipitous fall in the number of Wikipedia editors in the first three months of 2009. This is not consistent with the detailed statistics at stats.wikimedia.org which show a gradual decline only, with the number of editors in 2009 being generally about 5% down on a year earlier. I cannot find the source of the WSJ graph to find out the details and the definition of "editors" used - can anyone find this?
In any case, it appears to me to be remarkable that for a front page story the WSJ is running with statistics on Wikipedia usage that are already a full six months out of date, despite high quality figures that are much more up to date being readily available on the web. Cross checking the WSJ data against other sources does not appear to support their headline message of a severe and sudden decline in Wikipedia editors. Enchanter (talk) 02:10, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can cite several reasons for the weakening march of quality of the project. One, many topics have started to be fleshed out, and there aren't very many new articles that actually get very far, most new articles are not notable or fundamentally flawed and therefore have no need to be in an encyclopedia. Two, people have less time to edit the project as they deal with the recession. Three, Wikipedia is referenced more often than it is edited, and most edits seem to be coming from registered users as opposed to anonymous ones, meaning that the quality of Wikipedia is shifting from Anonymous contributions to the core users. --Rockstonetalk to me! 03:31, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I disagree that there is nothing left to edit. I chance upon articles everyday that are written poorly, have factual errors or have out-dated sources, so there is plenty out there to be done, not including the articles that need writing, (several thousand on aircraft alone, at present).Petebutt (talk) 18:53, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Erik Möller and Erik Zachte of the Wikimedia Foundation wrote a blogpost as a reply to the WSJ article. --Ainali (talk) 21:30, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the authors of this WSJ article might be unaware of the tradition of the "wikibreak". Unlike other communities, Wikipedia encourages users to put it up for a bit and resume editing later. Perhaps with the economic worries this has been happening for a lot more people than normal. I know this year, my editing has been low, but that's because I got my first apartment and switched jobs a few months later. I'm only now having enough free time to spend with Wikipedia again. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The articles got it right. This site has been taken over by wikilawyering deletionists. All the comment on this site is about how the research must be false, when all the comments below these articles are about bad experiences having useful content deleted. Mostlyharmless (talk) 11:18, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly so, looks like the hardcore are heading to the wikibunker. 81.97.24.118 (talk) 08:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Newbie edits are nails, and our policies and guidelines are hammers. - 74.32.172.4 (talk) 04:59, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • What a load of hooeey, blaming deletionists for what is little more than the maturation of Wikipedia. This is a non-problem, and reading the WJR article reveals the depths of the ignorance of the journalists who wrote it. 208.59.120.194 (talk) 07:37, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • From: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/26/wikipedias-volunteer-story is this: "On the English Wikipedia, the peak number of active editors (5 edits per month) was 54,510 in March 2007. After a more significant decline by about 25%, it has been stable over the last year at a level of approximately 40,000. (See WikiStats data for the English Wikipedia.) Many other Wikipedia language editions saw a rise in the number of editors in the same time period. As a result the overall number of editors on all projects combined has been stable at a high level over recent years." So it seems that many newbie English-speaking editors (less than 5 edits a month) quit because there is little room for new interesting articles on English Wikipedia. But other Wikimedia projects (Wikiversity, Commons, etc) have a great need for editors. The problem is that edits in Wikiversity, Commons, Wikibooks, Wikinews, etc. can't be watched in the same watchlist as Wikipedia. So people can't be bothered to open multiple watchlists. Especially new editors who barely understand watchlists, signatures, time stamps, etc.. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:31, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The idea that wikipedia is complete is total nonsense. Anyone believeing this just has to look at the history of feature articles, and see how last years FA fails to meet current standards, and one several years old would be laughed at if proposed now. Yet current, new, FAs still contain errors and nonsense because no one knowledgable has studied them in depth to check the facts, just confirmed references exist (highly unreliable). It concerns me that there is increasing pressure to restrict the creation of new articles and a general view that a stub is not worth having. A place marker for something is a first step. Wikipedia has suffered a staggering amount of instruction creep while I have been here which is intimidating for me, never mind anyone new trying to make a sincere contribution and trying to find out what to do. There are many editors here who see it as their task to discourage occasional additions to articles which they do not like. Who is going to come here to play when faced with that? I know a lot about how a wiki article works, but I learnt that having fun writing stuff off the top of my head. If no one is allowed to do that now, how is anyone going to learn, or want to? Sandpiper (talk) 08:52, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I strongly object to the headline. ortega's research and pretty much everything else referred to in the text merely point out that the number of editors is decreasing. This does not imply a decline of Wikipedia, so don't put that in the title. Rp (talk) 17:09, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I strongly object to the Briefly. What follows is a set of brief, but completely unrelated tidbits. It is in no way a summary of what went before. Better replace it with Meanwhile Rp (talk) 17:09, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Is this stuff supposed to be edited like normal articles? Rp (talk) 17:09, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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