Mark Nilrad wrote:
I'm curious, as the growth in Wikipedia has
slowed, has the numbers of ACTIVE users slowed as well?
If you're talking about
the demographics of editors - I think it is now
more three years since WP attracted a very large group of people,
arriving over a few months only, who created a "boom" in article
production (quantity not quality). Many of those will have left by now -
others have become some of our most productive editors. This can only
happen once: WP became a Net phenomenon at some point in 2005, and that
was because all of a sudden many people heard of it who hadn't before,
or who had ignored it. I would say the growth in editors was "over
trend" at that point. We are seeing more like a sustainable rate now,
and probably (who knows?) a higher proportion of "encyclopedist" types.
Obviously, as you can read in the Slashdot comments
(and many other places), this is not Wikipedia's strength, at all.
One thing that is not at all obvious to me is that there is any really
really credible reporting on this or other aspects of Wikipedia. It's
anecdotal at best - one or two incidents taken to stand for the site as
a whole, and its complexities. Plus people writing ignorant and
inaccurate stuff, of course.
Charles