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We don’t edit Wikipedia anymore. We don’t consult it for things that matter. It’s merely a good resource for finding odd facts no one cares much about. Snort.

We don’t edit Wikipedia anymore. We don’t consult it for things that matter. It’s merely a good resource for finding odd facts no one cares much about. Snort. Explain this then: Wikipedia's getting more views than ever, more edits than ever, and more editors than ever. http://reportcard.wmflabs.org http://reportcard.wmflabs.org There are plenty of things broken in Wikipedia alright, but none of them fatal, least of all some misguided categorization (oh, the humanity!) by some two-bit hack with an axe to grind. Everybody on Wikipedia has their own point of view, and while some people manage to game the system for a while, Wikipedia's core strength is precisely that it's self-correcting in the long run.

gojomo 13y ago
Um, I'm looking at the charts on that page, and: • 'active editors' are stagnant to slightly declining globally for the last 3 years – and definitely down in EN and DE (largest) Wikipedias • 'pageviews' growth has been slowing for a while, and since the start of 2013, total pageviews are down for 'all', EN, and DE • 'edits per month' (on the secondary page) seems stagnant-to-very-slightly-improving globally, but definitely on the downtrend in EN Sure, the the original article is an opinionated, possibly premature diagnosis of crisis... but your confident assertion of 'more activity than ever' isn't supported by those graphs!
- hobs 13y ago
  And counting how many edits are being made is akin to saying that you corrected 1000 loc because you found a spelling mistake in each. There is not an obvious connection to "contributing content" "meaningful content" or even "long form content". The site really allows you to draw hardly any conclusions regarding this article's statements.
- jpatokal 13y ago
  You'll note that the primary graph on the first page is new editors per month, which is fairly stable at ~20k/mo total and ~7k/mo English. As long as that number doesn't start plummeting, there's fresh blood coming in and Wikipedia's future is assured. Also, I think edits per month on EN and DE are slowly down simply because they're already so large and mature: these days most articles on most major topics that are, from a functional point of view, complete. This wasn't the case a few years ago, when even a layman could find things to fix everywhere and Wikipedia's article and edit counts were rocketing. As for page views, my theory is that Google's Knowledge Graph has reduced the need for actually clicking through to WP, since most Google searches for basic Wikipedia-type info now come up with capsule summaries (often extracted from WP) that may well answer your question.
  - gojomo 13y ago
    I agree that Google's Knowledge Graph is likely the largest reason for fewer visits. New editors don't assure Wikipedia's future unless they stay around; as of the last study I can find, 2010, retention had fallen to quite low numbers... http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study/Results#Editor_retention_has_not_worsened_over_the_past_three_years_.28Finding_.234.29 http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study/Resul... ...and each year's cohort was sticking around less than the year before. I recognize much of this may be that, in the more-established Wikipedias, the core audience of potential editors has been found, and the fun/easy 'low-hanging fruit' content has been finished (or made less fun/approachable by policy). But that means Wikipedia is in new territory, with fewer active and experienced editors over time, doing less-exciting maintenance and defense work, while search engines retain more 'reference' views and other competitive sites (especially in the Q&A space) improve their coverage and depth. Wikipedia needs positive attention to keep the forces of decay at bay; if the attentional indicators have shifted in the wrong direction, even very slightly for now, it risks nearing a tipping point into collapse.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Explain this then: Wikipedia's getting more views than ever, more edits than ever, and more editors than ever. That's like having the fastest-growing website on the internet - I got three views yesterday and 10 today, so I'm experiencing 330% growth!!! Statistics are meaningless without being scaled to something, in this case internet populations. I'm not about to write off wwikipedia, but your own graphs show the #s of editors and edits to the English language version stagnating over the last 2 years.

gojomo 13y ago

Um, I'm looking at the charts on that page, and: • 'active editors' are stagnant to slightly declining globally for the last 3 years – and definitely down in EN and DE (largest) Wikipedias • 'pageviews' growth has been slowing for a while, and since the start of 2013, total pageviews are down for 'all', EN, and DE • 'edits per month' (on the secondary page) seems stagnant-to-very-slightly-improving globally, but definitely on the downtrend in EN Sure, the the original article is an opinionated, possibly premature diagnosis of crisis... but your confident assertion of 'more activity than ever' isn't supported by those graphs!

hobs 13y ago
And counting how many edits are being made is akin to saying that you corrected 1000 loc because you found a spelling mistake in each. There is not an obvious connection to "contributing content" "meaningful content" or even "long form content". The site really allows you to draw hardly any conclusions regarding this article's statements.
jpatokal 13y ago
You'll note that the primary graph on the first page is new editors per month, which is fairly stable at ~20k/mo total and ~7k/mo English. As long as that number doesn't start plummeting, there's fresh blood coming in and Wikipedia's future is assured. Also, I think edits per month on EN and DE are slowly down simply because they're already so large and mature: these days most articles on most major topics that are, from a functional point of view, complete. This wasn't the case a few years ago, when even a layman could find things to fix everywhere and Wikipedia's article and edit counts were rocketing. As for page views, my theory is that Google's Knowledge Graph has reduced the need for actually clicking through to WP, since most Google searches for basic Wikipedia-type info now come up with capsule summaries (often extracted from WP) that may well answer your question.
- gojomo 13y ago
  I agree that Google's Knowledge Graph is likely the largest reason for fewer visits. New editors don't assure Wikipedia's future unless they stay around; as of the last study I can find, 2010, retention had fallen to quite low numbers... http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study/Results#Editor_retention_has_not_worsened_over_the_past_three_years_.28Finding_.234.29 http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study/Resul... ...and each year's cohort was sticking around less than the year before. I recognize much of this may be that, in the more-established Wikipedias, the core audience of potential editors has been found, and the fun/easy 'low-hanging fruit' content has been finished (or made less fun/approachable by policy). But that means Wikipedia is in new territory, with fewer active and experienced editors over time, doing less-exciting maintenance and defense work, while search engines retain more 'reference' views and other competitive sites (especially in the Q&A space) improve their coverage and depth. Wikipedia needs positive attention to keep the forces of decay at bay; if the attentional indicators have shifted in the wrong direction, even very slightly for now, it risks nearing a tipping point into collapse.

anigbrowl 13y ago

Explain this then: Wikipedia's getting more views than ever, more edits than ever, and more editors than ever. That's like having the fastest-growing website on the internet - I got three views yesterday and 10 today, so I'm experiencing 330% growth!!! Statistics are meaningless without being scaled to something, in this case internet populations. I'm not about to write off wwikipedia, but your own graphs show the #s of editors and edits to the English language version stagnating over the last 2 years.