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Wikipedia Disputes Editor Exodus Claims
eldavojohn writes "The Wikimedia blog has a new post from Erik Moeller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Erik Zachte, a data analyst, to dispute recent reports about editors leaving Wikipedia (which we discussed on Wednesday). They offer these points to discredit the claims: 'The number of people reading Wikipedia continues to grow. In October, we had 344 million unique visitors from around the world, according to comScore Media Metrix, up 6% from September. Wikipedia is the fifth most popular web property in the world. The number of articles in Wikipedia keeps growing. There are about 14.4 million articles in Wikipedia, with thousands of new ones added every day. The number of people writing Wikipedia peaked about two and a half years ago, declined slightly for a brief period, and has remained stable since then. Every month, some people stop writing, and every month, they are replaced by new people." They also note that it's impossible to tell whether someone has left and will never return, as their account still remains there."
At Wikipedia, we are proud that we have more editors than readers
The online encyclopedia, knowledge base, social networking site, essay repository, blog, search engine, news aggregator, dessert wax and floor topping Wikipedia has reached its three millionth article and ceased all editing as everyone gives up this "free" foolishness and goes home, to read newspapers and watch network television for the rest of their lives.
Dr Felipe Ortega reported that only 1% of edits by random users were kept. "They were all unspeakable shit," said burnt-out administrator WikiFiddler451. "All of them. No, I'm not exaggerating. Go to Special:Newpages and read a day's entries some time. You'll start by deleting the whole database, before you get onto plotting the doom of humanity. Christ, why go on?"
Recent media coverage has highlighted the "inclusionist/deletionist" wars of 2005, including enquiries from Endemol looking for a "passionate deletionist" to join Big Brother 11, "preferably one with big tits." It is thought that Wikipedia could have had ten million articles by now had they not viciously abused their editorial powers by deleting your valuable contributions about you, your teacher at school, your garage band or your dog or the many cameraphone pictures you uploaded of your penis.
"Everything's already been written," said WikiFiddler451, burning the last of his Star Wars figurines before leaving for his rehabilitation course in social interaction skills and basics of hygiene. "Do you have any idea how big THREE MILLION articles is? A BILLION GODDAMN WORDS! Are you going to read more than a droplet of that in your life? No you aren't. You're following your goddamn Twitter.
"But hey, only two million articles are The Simpsons in popular culture or Doctor Who in popular culture. No-one actually reads this stuff, they just write it. We have LiveJournal for stuff people write that no-one wants to read. 'Oh, I wandered lonely as a cheeseburger/ My passionate angst filling my Coke with darkness.' Or Knol. KNOL! I'll just Bing that one."
Shell-shocked veterans of Wikipedia are at a loss now that it's all over — wandering the alleyways of the Internet, mumbling to themselves about "ANI" and "we had to delete the village in order to save it," threatening the policemen moving them on with "arbitration" and bursting into tears when the policeman answers "citation needed." Mere children, sent into the culture wars to save knowledge from horrors they barely understood, and coming home as crippled wrecks. No victory parades for these brave men and women. There is only so much Citizendium, Uncyclopedia and 4chan can do for these child heroes. With your help, we can build Potemkin wikis for these honorable veterans, where they can safely ban and unban, revert and edit-war, and correct the naming of Danzig^WGdansk^WDanzig^WGdansk without the possibility of damage to actual human readers. Please donate so that they may never bug you again.
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The number of Wikipedia editors is not declining. In fact, their population has tripled in the last six months.
What? We can't have original research on /. now either?
You'll see an exodus of writers if this becomes common consensus!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the problem with other editors that won't accept your edits as valid unless you can show them a citation they understand
Aggravated further still by the fact that the "other editor" is, in real life, a self-absorbed Starbuck's barista whose only claim to precedence arises from the fact that he got involved in editing Wikipedia when it was the cool thing to do for sociopathic high school geeks who didn't have the motor coordination to play online shooters. He was navigating manufactured bureaucracy while you were navigating jungles leading that archaeological expedition; now you want to correct something on the article about the very same cache you unearthed, but "Would You Like Extra Foam On That?" Boy is throwing up speed bumps, mainly because he he lacks any basic understanding of your field of expertise, but also because he just had a fight with his mom and he's in a real foul mood.