[WikiEN-l] Look This Up on Wikipedia: How Big Is Too Big?

[Keith Old]

Folks,
The "New York Times" Bits blog has a small section on Wikimania.

Considering that
Wikipedia<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/wikipedia/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
has
reached Top Five world status among Web sites – with more than 330 million
users – its annual Wikimania conference, which ended Friday night in Buenos
Aires, featured a lot of hand-wringing about all the problems the project
faces.

After emerging on the scene less than a decade ago, growth is slowing down.
Why? Are new contributors being scared away? Are there too many rules? Why
are the biggest players in the community overwhelmingly men? And white? And
will Wikipedia ever become a true global phenomenon, as relevant to the
lives of people in the third world as it is in the developed world?

Like a freelancer suddenly overwhelmed with assignments, Wikipedians often
found themselves looking back at the sleepy days when they were largely left
alone. Scratch that. Maybe the better comparison is to the successful
journalists who look back to the time when they were so busy they never had
time to reflect.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/look-this-up-on-wikipedia-how-big-is-too-big/

(More in story)


Regards



Keith