John Lee wrote:
Indeed. I'm not sure if Andrew has the date down right, but some time in 2006 seems correct. I remember feeling impressed around the beginning of '06 that I was still seeing new admins and editors who shared the same philosophy and principles of Wikipedians I remember from when I started out in '03/'04, but I can't recall having a similar experience since then.
It struck me around that time too - admins and whole projects that had been active for some time, but of which I was completely unaware, even though I had 19K articles on my watchlist, and imagined I had something like a global view of WP development.
I don't know that anybody messed up, it's just that growth outpaced ability to enculturate. If I'm putting in 30 hrs/week on WP, it's not plausible that I bump the time up to 60 hrs/week so as to keep up with newcomers.
Stan