[LINK] Wikipedia's on the wane: study

[Roger Clarke]

At 14:29 +1000 7/8/09, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>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
...
>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.

C'mon Asher, make allowance for the logistical curve.  Do you really 
think that the number of articles worth writing is infinite??

[Later] Okay, a couple of paras. towards the end acknowledge that.


>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.

There's more than a little truth in that   (:-(}


>"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.

 From my quick sampling late yesterday, the event appears to have zinged.


...


Clarifications late in the article:

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


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

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