[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

[Howie Fung]

  I think viewing competition from the standpoint of "competition for 
people's time" can be very useful.   There has been some data that's 
pointed to how Internet users as a whole have been shifting their time 
towards social networks (namely Facebook) and gaming at the expense of 
other sites/activities [1]. A few months ago, I ran some quick numbers 
using ComScore data to show how the allocation of user's time online is 
shifting.  I posted the information on my talk page on meta: 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Howief

The ComScore numbers (read [2] for a overview of the benefits and 
limitations of their data) show that time on Facebook has increased by 
48% in the past year while overall time spent online has increased only 
5.6%.  Many other sites within the top 10 are either flat or declining 
with respect to user time.  This data is far from telling us anything 
conclusive about impact on editing.  For starters, it's a measurement of 
internet users as a whole which, for Wikipedia data, comprises mostly 
readers while we're probably more interested in editors/potential 
editors.  But I do think the data points toward the direction of further 
exploration than away from it.

Quantifying the effect of "competition for people's time" is going to be 
difficult, but if anyone wants to help in that effort, please drop a 
note on my talk page.

Howie

[1] 
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/
[2] 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stu/comScore_data_on_Wikimedia#Discussion_of_comScore_.26_Wikimedia

On 12/21/10 3:55 PM, Carcharoth wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki<doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com>  wrote:
>
>> But..... where we are in competition with others is for the time of the
>> undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet.
>> He's got any number of choices - what we draw him to Wikipedia and make him
>> stick around? I wonder that the downturn in Wikipedia contributions is due
>> largely to their being more "grown up" social networking phenomena than
>> there were in 2004. Now, it is tempting to say that the fact that the
>> "myspacers" have buggered off is not bad thing - but I wonder how many
>> intelligent, educated people are now squandering time on Facebook who once
>> might have been Wikipedia contributors?
> I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the
> internet in general has more potential for people to "waste their
> time" than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books
> and works of art are going to be left undone because people are
> wasting their time on Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and the like (and
> all the other websites and other online distractions out there)? You
> would *hope* that the truly exceptional in each generation avoid such
> traps and fulfil their potential, harnessing the power of the internet
> rather than being sucked into a churning maw, but you never know. And
> yes, I do think being a Wikipedia editor is more productive than using
> Facebook and Twitter. :-)
>
> Carcharoth
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l