The claim may be as old as Wikipedia itself, but it is true nonetheless. A study [1] performed using Wikipedia's own numbers showed that the Wikipedia community

The claim may be as old as Wikipedia itself, but it is true nonetheless. A study [1] performed using Wikipedia's own numbers showed that the Wikipedia community is in serious trouble. To quote the paper, "However, recent research has shown that the number of active contributors in Wikipedia has been declining steadily for years and suggests that a sharp decline in the retention of newcomers is the cause." To wit, there may be 10,000 active editors now, but there were 56,000 active editors in 2007. That's a nearly 80% decline in the number of active editors. That's not exactly what I would call a sign of a healthy community. The paper goes on to suggest that the reason for the active editors leaving is exactly what zyxley proposed. The amount of work needed to make an edit stick has grown to be an impossibly large burden for all but the most dedicated of volunteers. Even the terminology used by Wikipedians is opaque. Wikipedia has evolved its own legalese-like jargon to describe the actions that new editors can or cannot take. While that may be a fine shorthand for administrators to discuss policies amongst themselves, it is a problem when a new contributor is told that their edit doesn't meet "WP:V" or their new article was rejected because it didn't meet "WP:N". [1] http://abs.sagepub.com/content/57/5/664 http://abs.sagepub.com/content/57/5/664