[LINK] Wikipedia's on the wane: study

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Wikipedia's on the wane: study
Asher Moses
August 7, 2009 - 12:02PM
SMH
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikipedias-on-the-wane-study-20090807-ec98.html

A graph showing that the number of monthly edits on Wikipedia has 
declined since 2007.
http://images.smh.com.au/2009/08/07/669047/wiki-420x0.jpg

Wikipedia has jumped the shark, according to a new Californian study, 
which found the number of new articles added a month was on a steep 
decline and new contributors were being pushed out by the rusted-on 
Wikipedia elite.

But Wikipedia executives, in Canberra this week for an unprecedented 
Wiki gathering, say the study is way off the mark as it fails to 
consider the fact that the English-language version now has more than 3 
million articles and it is difficult to expand the site into new areas 
without the help of specialist volunteers with expertise in various 
subject areas.

The researchers, from the Palo Alto Research Centre, found the number of 
new articles added per month flatlined at 60,000 in 2006 and has since 
declined by a third.

Growth in the number of active Wikipedia editors a month reached a peak 
of 820,532 in March 2007 and has since fluctuated between 650,000 and 
810,000.

Wikipedia was launched in 2001 with the pledge of being a free 
encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but since then the more established 
editors, with their own world views and biases, have rapidly grown to 
dominate the site and some say they are resistant to new content and ideas.

The study found that these elite users were pushing out new 
contributors, with 25 per cent of occasional wiki editors' changes 
erased or reverted by other editors. This is up from 10 per cent in 2003.

"Because the project is much more filled out and more complete, it's 
increasingly harder for new users to be able to add something without 
some level of expertise," said Wikimedia Australia vice-president Liam 
Wyatt.

To rectify this problem, global Wikipedia representatives have flown to 
Canberra this week for a world-first meeting with 170 people from 
Australian cultural institutions including galleries, libraries, 
archives and museums.

The goal of the meeting is to figure out a way for Wikipedia to take the 
institutions' expertise and information stored in their archives and 
make them easily accessible to the world through Wikipedia.

"We have a shared mission and we think it's important that we can 
collaborate; their expertise is of great use to us as original research, 
citations and references," Wyatt said.

Mathias Schindler, project manager for Wikimedia Deutschland, said 
Wikipedia had just gone through its "era of low-hanging fruits" and it 
was now a challenge to keep expanding the site at the same rate.

"Once you have written about every major event in the last 200 years it 
is getting more and more challenging to find topics that aren't covered 
at all ... the task now is not to write new articles; the task is to 
actually improve existing ones," Schindler said.

Wyatt conceded that the democratic, flat power structure of Wikipedia 
meant it was sometimes difficult for the community of volunteer editors 
to reach consensus on certain issues, but the model was clearly working 
so far.

He said Wikipedia was now the fourth most visited website in the world 
and the largest education resource ever.

"People who like sausages or obeying the law shouldn't see either being 
made, and the same goes for encyclopedias - it's a messy process but the 
outcome is good," Wyatt said.

Wyatt said the first global strategic review of Wikipedia began this 
month, with the community being called on from the bottom-up to help 
determine a plan for the next five years.

-- 
 
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au