Posted by: kozuch on: January 7, 2009
Is Wikipedia in recession? After recent announcement of Nicolas Negroponte that OLPC is having difficulties, it seems the global financial and economical crisis won’t pass on non-profits by. In its last issue, the Wikipedia Signpost wrote the project is experiencing edit decline – have the problems come to the world’s biggest collaborative encyclopedia? One could hope not so, but such online-charity projects rely heavy upon volunteers, and if a volunteer has problems, he/she does not contribute.
On the other hand, the Wikipedia project has been growing for years, so a downturn would be no surprise… I am wondering what will happen to Free and Open Source Software projects and businesses – are they a better and more sustainable model than the rest of the world?
January 14, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Wikipedia was bound to have a decline in edits. Just compare the maturity of many articles now with, say two years ago.
As it continues to mature there will continue to be a decline. After all, once every little town on, for example, the Atherton Tablelands, has its own article, what is left to do there? (Other than fanboys and girls writing articles about whatever it is that takes up their time.)
And if the global financial crisis truly bites into Wikipedia, and the entire thing is threatened, you might just find that the debate they’ve been having about advertising will take a different turn.
January 15, 2009 at 8:43 pm
You might be right, as according to Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia’s growth the peak is most likely over…