One of the internet’s largest crowdsourcing experiments is losing its crowd at a rapid pace, according to a study by Spanish university research group Libresoft, the Wall Street Journal and BBC report. Wikipedia denies the claim.
In the first three months of 2009, the online encyclopedia experienced a net loss of more than 49,000 volunteer contributors, compared with 4,900 lost during the same period in 2008. In March and April alone, the site lost almost a quarter of its English-language editors, The Times explains.
The author of the study, Felipe Ortega, says new rules aimed at improving accuracy and reducing vandalism may have made the environment “hostile” to many existing and potential contributors, WSJ adds. Representatives from Wikipedia, however, suggest that with more than 3 million articles, they may be running out of “easy work” for the crowd to contribute.
The group overseeing Wikimedia said the study's claims are inaccurate, blaming the difference on what counts as an "editor" and explaining that new editors are replacing existing ones, BBC and the Telegraph say.
» Wikipedia loses editors: A crowdsourcing reality check, or a failure of a different kind? (The Industry Standard)
» "I wasn't sure if anyone would use it," Wikimedia founder says (Irish Times)
The Wiki-defections
IMHO the top three reasons for everyone leaving in droves are:
1.It is an enormous undertaking to maintain accuracy.
2.It is an enormous undertaking to ferret out the spam.
3.It’s the workload period, and we don’t get paid or appreciated for do this.
Andy
This wouldn't surprise me if
This wouldn't surprise me if it were true. The amount of work they have to do to keep the content "accurate", if you can call it that, is too much for most volunteers.
I certainly wouldn't do it. Especially when you consider that someone can come along and edit anything you've just fixed again to some false, inaccurate or spammy statement,
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