On 25 Nov 2009, at 13:18, Brian McNeil wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 13:08 +0000, Gordon Joly wrote:
Michael Peel wrote:
I've just spoken to Rory by phone, and managed to touch on a number of different topics with him - including the Usability Initiative, the bookshelf project, Britain Loves Wikipedia and other local events, etc. There were lots of issues that I didn't cover (different language versions, strategy, different viewpoints on the numbers, ...), so I would encourage others to also get in touch with him.
Apparently, Mr Ortega's work is based on people who register an account and make one edit or more.
The WMF stats are based on slightly different metrics; only people with five or more edits are classed as "contributors".
I am not a scientist or, more importantly, a statistician. But, these seem like radically different criteria for an analysis.
He's posted his blog article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/11/wikipedia_on_the_wane.html
Sadly a lot of the points I was hoping to get across didn't make it into the post, but the last paragraph of his post is great, and something I wish the newspaper articles would end with:
"So this is a project that is suffering plenty of growing pains - but with a Wikipedia entry coming top of Google's search results for just about any topic you can imagine, the online encyclopaedia is certainly not on the wane."
I've had no other calls/emails from any other media organizations about this story.
The Press Association are looking for comment.
They called me shortly after I sent that message; I spent ~ 10 mins talking to them on the phone. Hopefully something good will come out of that...
Mike