Look up the Wikipedia article on the assassination of Julius Caesar. Now if you made a change to this article and were a Wikipedia Uber Editor (1,000+ edits) per month, the likelihood that your additions or edits would be challenged is very, very small (less than 1%). However, if you were anyone else you can expect to be challenged about 15% of the time. Combine these facts with the knowledge that the Wikipedia community is not growing, and what does this mean about one of the web's most popular sites? Stagnation may have arrived, and perhaps worse ... if you're not part of the "in crowd", it's hard to become a Wikipedian. If this is true, it would be a shame. c|Net has a report just published a few days ago on the status of Wikipedia. In the c|Net report it quotes from the Guardian:
The Guardian newspaper offered this plaintive quote from a frustrated junior editor, Aaron Schwarz: "There's no place on Wikipedia that says: 'Want to become a Wikipedia editor? Here's how you do it.' Instead, you basically have to really become part of that community and pick it up through osmosis and have the tradition passed down to you."
I attended Wikimania back in 2006 and was fascinated. More importantly, I learned. I hope c|Net is wrong.
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