Wikipedia's Contributors Diminishing in Number
Wikipedia's Contributors Diminishing in Number
Posted 08/04/2011 at 9:52am
| by Paul Lilly
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Here's a challenge if you're looking to kill some time. Look up a topic on Google -- any topic -- and see if Wikipedia doesn't make the front page. This isn't exactly an impossible mission, but by and large, Wikipedia makes its presence known nearly every time we search for something, which is partially the result of an army of volunteers adding and editing content on everything under the sun. But what would happen to Wikipedia if it was suddenly starved for writers?
The open online encyclopedia hopes to never find out, however Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales recently lamented to The Associated Press his site is losing contributors.
"We are not replenishing our ranks. It is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important," Wales told AP.
In an effort to retain members, Wales said he hopes to make the process of submitting and maintaining content easier than it is, which he admits is "convoluted" in its current state. The other problem, as Wales sees it, is that there are simply less new topics to write about than there were 10 years ago when the site went live. Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, says there's an effort to get universities more involved through a program that would have professors hand out Wikipedia writing assignments to students.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
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shubhrajoshi
August 22, 2011 at 5:00am
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Eoraptor
August 04, 2011 at 10:21am
i think the declining contribution numbers is less that Wikipedia is decreasing in popularity, and more that it's not the only game in town any more. Wikia is open source, and now, instead of directly editing a "wikipedia" page, with edit wars and hoops to jump through, you can go and edit a similar page on a niche wikia site with far less of a hassel.
Truly it's a problem that is entirely wikipedia's own making. and yes, what they said about the saturation of topics leaving little new territory to be explored is an issue as well.
Happy
August 04, 2011 at 2:43pm
Exactly, I used to contribute to Wikipedia but I stopped when I tried to add a little tiny bit about the new common usage of the word "fag" (where it's used to mean the equivalent of "lame" or "uncool" or "annoying") to the page on the word and I even gave two pieces of evidence to back up what I said but they refused my edit and sent me a message giving me some bullcrap about why they wouldn't post it. That was when I told myself "Ok, they wanna be fags and block a perfectly innocent informative edit, fine, then I'll just stop contributing. Contrbuting to Wikipedia? Never again!" And I haven't contributed to them since. Or given money anymore either. I still look stuff up on Wikipedia but I refuse to help it monetarily or by adding info to pages.
Happy
August 04, 2011 at 2:43pm
Exactly, I used to contribute to Wikipedia but I stopped when I tried to add a little tiny bit about the new common usage of the word "fag" (where it's used to mean the equivalent of "lame" or "uncool" or "annoying") to the page on the word and I even gave two pieces of evidence to back up what I said but they refused my edit and sent me a message giving me some bullcrap about why they wouldn't post it. That was when I told myself "Ok, they wanna be fags and block a perfectly innocent informative edit, fine, then I'll just stop contributing. Contrbuting to Wikipedia? Never again!" And I haven't contributed to them since. Or given money anymore either. I still look stuff up on Wikipedia but I refuse to help it monetarily or by adding info to pages.
alcarcalimo2364
August 06, 2011 at 9:07am
Ok, technically i'm a "fag", and i don't quite understand how them blocking you from editing makes them "fags", regardless of whether you think it means lame, uncool or annoying. And if you look up the page, there's plenty of descriptions of its popular use, regardless of its offensiveness. Glad you aren't contributing anymore.
Phosphorous
August 04, 2011 at 10:10am
I'd say 90% of my professors would not let us even consider using Wikipedia as an online resource. We always had to use scholarly articles and things of that nature.
tornato7
August 04, 2011 at 12:46pm
I got my teachers to approve wikipedia as a resourse by consulting the english AND spanish page of each article for discrepancies. Sometimes there are, in which case i don't use it.
ccardarelli
August 04, 2011 at 10:23am
Yeah, but often the cited sources linked in the footnotes were definitely okay for my professors.
Eoraptor
August 04, 2011 at 10:41am
Agreed there, As long as you are diligent about reading the entire wiki through to the footnotes, it's really not AS BAD so some detractors like to claim.
TerribleToaster
August 04, 2011 at 12:05pm
Exactly. As long as you use wikipedia to find the scholarly articles, you're golden.
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