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Wikipedia founder says it is losing contributors
USER BASED ONLINE ENCYCLOPEDIA Wikipedia is seeing a substantial drop in contributors, according to its founder, Jimmy Wales.
Wales revealed that the online resource, which entirely depends on the contributions of users, is losing numbers, which could affect the quantity and quality of the content available.
"We are not replenishing our ranks," Wales told the Associated Press. "It is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important."
There are close to five billion users throughout the various Wikimedia Foundation projects, but as of March this year Wikipedia itself had only around 90,000 active contributors. The goal is to add another 5,000 to that number by June 2012, according to executive director Sue Gardner.
Wales said that Wikipedia is trying to simplify the way users add and edit material, adding that the editorial guidelines are very convoluted and impenetrable to new users, which is one of the factors that is driving numbers down.
Another major problem for the decade-old web site is that there is only so much information that can be added to it, with most of the popular topics, interests, people and products already covered in detail. With less to do at the web site it's not entirely surprising that the number of contributors is dropping.
Wikipedia also suffered a negative reputation for many years due to the questionable nature of some of the material added to the web site. It was frequently lambasted as an unreliable resource in schools and colleges, but it's finally starting to recover from this stigma, thanks laregly to stricter editorial rules, which make it much clearer when claims are not appropriately backed up.
In addition to making contributions to Wikipedia easier, there will also be a campaign to encourage professors to give students assignments to write entries on the web site, which the team hopes will bring in lots of new users. Meanwhile Wikipedia has recently added a feature called Wikilove, similar to Facebook's Like or Google+'s +1, to keep existing users engaged. µ
Tags: Internet
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It has never been the users, it has always been the editors. The holier-than-thou kind, who have always been able to flaunt any and every rule Jimbo has ever set down in order to ensure that their pet subject (or obsession in some cases) stayed written exactly how THEY liked it.
Every time a contributor tried to add information that went against the über-editor's point of view, the battle was lost in advance. When it really became interesting (and ridiculous) was when über-editor picked a fight against another über-editor on the same subject. Then we could assist to a major political brawl where the end result was always in favor of the one who cuddled up to Jimbo the most.
THAT has beaten Wikipedia's credibility to dust in the mind of every single intelligent person on Earth.
And I don't see any recovery yet.
Check this out @ http://www.gutclean.com/vangogharchive.html which records the hassle of just one user trying to correct a ridiculous remark to the effect that Vincent van Gogh's last paintings were "severely dark".
That's what they get for burning books... I mean text. I used to contribute quite frequently, but after observing the "logic" applied by those who were more equal, and the ideologically driven editing decisions of many, I just had to let go. Sheesh, they can't even get pictures added, because anything that isn't marked as "free for any use" gets deleted on one pretense or another. Wikipedia is free as in communism.
1 - Spot error in wikipedia page.
2 - Fix error.
3 - Return a couple of days later to the error has been put back in again.
4 - Pay for Encyclopaedia Britannica. At least the errors are consistent.