14 DAY TRIAL // News about Wikipedia's impending demise have come and gone, but the world's largest encyclopedia seems to be enduring. This won't last for long, according to a researcher from Spain who points at the dwindling number of volunteer editors as a clear sign that the site is headed to the dust bin. The study shows that, in the first three months of the year, the site has lost 49,000 editors.
This, compared with the same period last year, when only 4,900 left. Of course, Wikipedia still has about three million active contributors across all of the languages supported, so the well may not be drying out any time soon. But the study would seem to imply that this is part of a larger trend, one that, if continued, will lead to big problems for the site, which relies heavily on the volunteers to not only provide the content, but also settle disputes and maintain the quality of the articles.
A previous study, focusing on the English version of the site, released in summer has shown an equally worrying trend, the number of new articles being added to the site has leveled off for the past couple of years and is now actually beginning to decline. The same is true for the number of edits. However, that study found that the number of active editors had been constant at about 750,000 per month for the past couple of years.
There are a couple of theories that aim to offer an answer to the decline. The first and rather obvious one is that Wikipedia has amassed enough content that there is a growing shortage of new things to write about. At over three million articles available in just the English version of the site, it would seem like this theory may be justified.
There is, however, another theory, one that is more worrying. In its quest for better control over the content, the number of internal squabbles is rising and the more established editors are increasingly hostile towards the newer ones. Whatever the case, it remains to be seen how this trend will affect the site, which is now one of the most visited on the planet.