Joe Anderson wrote:
On 6/4/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Historically, Meta was the place where a lot of "community" stuff happened. At some point (probably the first half of 2005) things which would normally have been transwikied to meta: started appearing in the Wikipedia: namespace, and staying there.
Interesting point Alphax. Many Wikipedian organisations are located on the meta over the Wikipedia: space (see m:Category:Wikipedian associations)
However, most new one's are either User: or Wikipedia:
I think lack of single login (and particularly of shared watchlists), combined with the disproportionate growth of Wikipedia (and particularly of the English Wikipedia), is probably one of the major causes of this.
I can keep track of what's going on in Wikipedia, or at least in the areas I frequent or have frequented, by looking at my watchlist. But I have no idea what's going on at meta unless I load up my watchlist there in a separate tab -- and in any case, since I so rarely go there, I only have a handful of pages watched there (mostly administrative or technical project pages) and don't really know where most of the discussion is going on.
There are other technical and social reasons too, of course. But I think that's a big one.