Where Wikipedia Ends By Farhad Manjoo, Time (Sept 28)
Time magazine is reporting that Wikipedia growth has flattened and may be declining. In March 2009 it reached its peak with 890.000 editors.
"Not only is Wikipedia slowing, but also new stats suggest that hard-core participants are a pretty homogeneous set — the opposite of the ecumenical wiki ideal."
It has adopted more controls to improve trustiworthiness. Would that be dampening growth? Or has nearly everything that people want to write about been done?
Wikipedia is important - at this point we wouldn't want to lose it. But, as this article concludes - "Still, Wikipedia's troubles suggest the limits of Web 2.0 — that when an idealized community gets too big, it starts becoming dysfunctional. Just like every other human organization."
Posted by Gwen at September 19, 2009 01:47 AM