This doesn't make sense - there are more humans on the planet, more people online, than ever before. The only reason that editorship has declined into stagnation is because of how unpleasant editing Wikipedia is compared to how it could be.

On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 2:05 PM Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:

I think it's even more simple than that.

There are a limited number of people who would say "You know what I'd really like to do in my free time? I want to work on an encyclopedia." That's just not something that would be, or ever will be, appealing to everyone.

And by now, well, the vast majority of them have at least heard of Wikipedia. Maybe some haven't tried it and caught "the bug", but a lot of people would try it out and say "Nah, this isn't my thing."

Todd

On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 11:38 AM Neurodivergent Netizen <idoh.idreamofhorses@gmail.com> wrote:

I think the reasons for less active editors is primarily because a large part of common knowledge is already now created and being held in Wikipedia, unlike at the start and first few years of it's existence.

No, I think the problem is the impenetrable thicket of jargon and bureaucracy and the bias for deletionism.

Can’t it be both?

Because the more general areas of knowledge is covered, we’re less inclined to be understandable towards newer editors and more inclined to delete.

The problem I think we have now is trying to attract subject matter experts, possibly along with their students/proteges, who can contribute reliable sources to Wikipedia.

From,

I dream of horses

She/her

On Oct 4, 2024, at 9:57 AM, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com> wrote:

No, I think the problem is the impenetrable thicket of jargon and bureaucracy and the bias for deletionism.

On Fri, Oct 4, 2024, 10:22 AM Thad Guidry <thadmguidry@outlook.com> wrote:

I think the reasons for less active editors is primarily because a large part of common knowledge is already now created and being held in Wikipedia, unlike at the start and first few years of it's existence.

I think generally that as any knowledge base grows, such as Wikimedia, that edits tend to be fewer as general knowledge articles are set in place, and thus remains creating only articles that cover the long tail of remaining knowledge.  Hence, we are in a position in many of the larger language Wikipedia's having less of a need for general article authorship, and instead a need for creating articles that cover the long tails of knowledge with domain experts.

-Thad

---

From: Anders Wennersten <mail@anderswennersten.se>
Sent: Thursday, October 3, 2024 8:52 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Trend of number of active editor

 

We have often discussed the trend of fewer active editors, and some of
us have just  discussed this at nowp and swwp and one of my fellow
wikiedian has made a very interesting comparison graph where the numbers
are normalized according to number of speakers, https://puu.sh/Kg6xQ.png

As can be seen av very positive trend on frwp and plwp and reassuring
one on enwp. Do we others have important lessons to be learnt from pl
and frwp?

Anders


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