That's the question Wikipedia leaders and social science researchers are tackling. They've documented a drastic decline in the retention of new Wikipedia editors over the last five years.

A new study published in the American Behavioral Science Journal by former Wikimedia Fellows says Wikipedia has lost some 30 percent of its English-language editors since 2006, as a result of off-putting automated rejections, restrictive new rules, and controlling older editors.

"What was most surprising was the scale of the problem," lead researcher Aaron Halfaker told the Daily Dot.

Founded in 2001, Wikipedia was a first-of-its-kind experiment in online collaboration. Anyone who desired could sign up and become an editor, contributing to any of the site's entries, which now include more than 23 million topics. This openness allowed Wikipedia to cover a much wider range of subjects than a traditional encyclopedia, but it also made the project a source of criticism for its frequency of misinformation, either through accidental mistakes or deliberate vandalism.

That's why Wikipedia instituted new rules in 2007 to improve the quality of information, but according to Halfaker, these same rules have driven away more than just the unwanted vandals.

In 2006, only about 6 percent of "quality" new editors had their contributions rejected—a.k.a. "reverted" in Wikipedia lingo. In 2010, the number of contributions by new editors were being reverted at a rate of 1-in-4 by senior editors and the site's own automated response systems.

Halfaker said that as a result, only about 11 percent of new editors have been staying on past their first two months, driving down the total number of contributors to the site. He said part of that has to do with the "nasty" initial experience many new editors have.

If you're a new Wikipedia editor, the first message you get is usually from a bot or a semi-automated editing tool. It'll warn you of such issues as "lack of sources" or "blanking" and is designed to deter vandals or "bad-faith editors."

Go a little easy on people who are starting to contribute; love,
encourage and forgive them instead of being so critical and punishing.
Create page-tags/templates that can illustrate the fact that it's a
work-in-progress, assign this status by default on new articles so a
newbie isn't expected to already have advanced skills (which is a
stupid, stupid thing wikipedia is doing right now. Adding references and
templates is difficult, period. Don't expect a person with less than 50
edit counts to know or even want to learn about it). When a visitor
comes at a page, maybe an age or number of edits can be displayed at the
top to convey an idea of how mature or immature the article is.

Having permanent-tenure editors is as bad an idea as having permanent
bureaucrats or government leaders: There should be limited terms and
off-periods between them and retirement times; that will be good for the
editing community and will encourage editors to pass the baton on rather
than be in a permanent status contest of entrenchment, edit-counts,
deletions etc that I see at present. I got totally turned off at the
last wikipedia meetup I attended in my city when people started showing
off their edit-counts and were treating them like army medals. Many of
the veteran editors today would never have participated in Wikipedia if
they'd faced the kind of treatment given to newbies today. Obviously,
this is an unsustainable model and headed for collapse when the present
generation of editors dies out. Remove any element of competition; there
is no such thing as healthy competition. There is no need for
wikipedia's editors to have an obsessive compulsive quality control
behaviour : we are NOT competing with peer-reviewed journals or
mainstream publications; we are NOT supposed to be 100% accurate
"no-matter-what". That much is obvious in the disclaimers; we need to
remind the editors lobby about it. Quality is achieved through time,
love, room for experimentation and prolonged attention; not through
rushed editing and deletions. Beware of throwing out the baby with the
bathwater.