The core mission of Wikipedia is so far I know to write a free encyclopaedia.
The number of visitors to Wikipedia is exploding. Are all of these people writing articles? That seems not likely. I do not know how many of all traffic is done by editors but I assume it must be relative small compared to the total traffic.
So Wikipedia now is not only a project to write a encyclopaedia but also a website where people come to read the encyclopaedia.
Why? Is it so important to be one of the most visited websites in the world? (and have to pay for it)
Outsource the reading of the encyclopaedia. Keep Wikipedia out of the results of the search engines. Reduce drastically the traffic to Wikipedia. Keep Wikipedia only as the project to write the encyclopaedia.
Assist company's to set-up mirrors and sync whit the real wikipedia. Those mirrors can be the entry points to the real wikipedia for users who like to edit.
This way the cost of operating wikipedia can be reused. Wikipedia.org will disappear from the alexa stats. And Wikipedia can focus on writing a free encyclopaedia. The result of this can be a slowing down of the grow of the encyclopedia. But Wikipedia is now +/- 5 years old. There is time. Better a slower growed then a exposing and then failier because of to fast growed.
Walter Vermeir wrote:
Outsource the reading of the encyclopaedia. Keep Wikipedia out of the results of the search engines. Reduce drastically the traffic to Wikipedia. Keep Wikipedia only as the project to write the encyclopaedia.
I don't think you can seperate those. Doing minor edits is something I do when I read an article. I go to Wikipedia both to read *and* to write; seperating those would be disastrous. I think the number of minor edits, and therefore the growth of quality, would plunge dramatically.
Gerrit.
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