On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Mark Nilrad <marknilrad(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
In general, about article creation, this has obviously
slowed quite a lot. However, I think that is a good thing, as that means that article
writers now have a chance to catch up to all the new articles. That is why the precentage
of articles that are GAs, FAs, or FLs is rising, and will continue to rise.
Currently, these 3 categories combined make up about 1 in 277 articles (0.36%). It's
better than before, but it obviously could go a lot further. That's why I think the
focus during Wikipedia's "adolescent" should be article improvement, and not
so much creation.
On a related topic, really the only way to increase in this way is by getting for users.
I'm curious, as the growth in Wikipedia has slowed, has the numbers of ACTIVE users
slowed as well? Because really, beyond just the policies and long-winded arguments on ANI,
there's the fact that you can't watch over all the articles that Wikipedia has
without getting more and more editors. Another reason why being nice to newcomers and
leaving a good first impression is so crucial. Obviously, as you can read in the Slashdot
comments (and many other places), this is not Wikipedia's strength, at all.
Mark Nilrad
Relevant to this discussion:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost…
"The new data shows that the community continued to grow for about six
months after the peak in article growth rate, reaching a maximum of
18,126 registered user accounts (excluding bots) with at least 20
article namespace edits in the month of March 2007. By September 2008
(the last month covered by the new statistics) only 13,971 accounts
made 20 or more article edits. Anonymous edits and total non-bot edits
across all namespaces also peaked in March 2007."
"In 2005, users making at least one article edit in a given month were
about twice as likely to make over 100 edits that month than in 2007
and 2008. However, the proportion of active users making at least 2500
article edits per month has been rising since early 2007."
"User:MBisanz has charted the number of new accounts registered per
month, which tells a very similar story: March 2007 recorded the
largest number of new accounts, and the rate of new account creation
has fallen significantly since then. Declines in activity have also
been noted, and fretted about, at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship."
My take on this is that all this tells a story of ever fewer people
joining, and casual editors continuously winding down & leaving. This
means that the small group of dead-ender hardcore editors will grow as
a percentage, which may seem like a good thing ('yay, more editors are
becoming obssessed!') until you consider the larger picture.
(My cynical sarcastic take on this is to thank all the reference nazis
& deletionists & vandal-fighters; we couldn't've done't without ye!)
--
gwern