I think viewing competition from the standpoint of "competition for
people's time" can be very useful. There has been some data that's
pointed to how Internet users as a whole have been shifting their time
towards social networks (namely Facebook) and gaming at the expense of
other sites/activities [1]. A few months ago, I ran some quick numbers
using ComScore data to show how the allocation of user's time online is
shifting. I posted the information on my talk page on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Howief
The ComScore numbers (read [2] for a overview of the benefits and
limitations of their data) show that time on Facebook has increased by
48% in the past year while overall time spent online has increased only
5.6%. Many other sites within the top 10 are either flat or declining
with respect to user time. This data is far from telling us anything
conclusive about impact on editing. For starters, it's a measurement of
internet users as a whole which, for Wikipedia data, comprises mostly
readers while we're probably more interested in editors/potential
editors. But I do think the data points toward the direction of further
exploration than away from it.
Quantifying the effect of "competition for people's time" is going to be
difficult, but if anyone wants to help in that effort, please drop a
note on my talk page.
Howie
[1]
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-…
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stu/comScore_data_on_Wikimedia#Discussi…
On 12/21/10 3:55 PM, Carcharoth wrote:
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM,
wiki<doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
But..... where we are in competition with others
is for the time of the
undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet.
He's got any number of choices - what we draw him to Wikipedia and make him
stick around? I wonder that the downturn in Wikipedia contributions is due
largely to their being more "grown up" social networking phenomena than
there were in 2004. Now, it is tempting to say that the fact that the
"myspacers" have buggered off is not bad thing - but I wonder how many
intelligent, educated people are now squandering time on Facebook who once
might have been Wikipedia contributors?
I've had similar thoughts, but more
general, thinking that the
internet in general has more potential for people to "waste their
time" than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books
and works of art are going to be left undone because people are
wasting their time on Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and the like (and
all the other websites and other online distractions out there)? You
would *hope* that the truly exceptional in each generation avoid such
traps and fulfil their potential, harnessing the power of the internet
rather than being sucked into a churning maw, but you never know. And
yes, I do think being a Wikipedia editor is more productive than using
Facebook and Twitter. :-)
Carcharoth
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