American historian: Wikipedia editors are falling because they have nothing to write about

Wikipedia as the temple of the Holy Family of Gaudi

The activity of Wikipedia editors has been declining for quite some time, and historian Richard Jensen, who himself is involved in writing Wikipedia, has a theory that can explain the reasons for this. The problem, according to Jensen, is that the editors now have just less work than they did in the past.

He cites examples of such articles as the Anglo-American War of 1812 and the Second World War, the peak of which was between 2005 and 2007. Whereas they ceased to be substantially supplemented, the number of their views, on the contrary, is steadily increasing - which, according to Jensen, shows that the reason is not a drop in interest in the articles, but the fact that they are almost full.

In the past five years, Wikipedia has had difficulty recruiting and retaining new volunteer editors, writes The Atlantic. The foundation behind Wikipedia has made building its editors base its main goal. In order to achieve it, he tries to encourage the friendly attitude to beginners in the community, and also to make the registration process easier, and the editing itself is more convenient.

However, the decline in activity may have little to do with the culture in the community or the design of the site. “Wikipedia has more and more readers, but they have less and less to add new things,” writes Jensen in the latest issue of The Journal of Military History.
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Of course, the encyclopedia about everything can never come close to absolute fullness, but at least on major topics such as significant wars, important historical figures, basic scientific concepts, English Wikipedia is pretty well filled. Articles about them may still require clarification of sources, minor updates, new links, formatting fixes - but most of the work, that is, the texts themselves and the structuring of the articles, have already been done.

Most of the main Wikipedia articles were written in 2006 and 2007, and "since then, the editors have received relatively little attention."

Dynamics of growth in the number of articles in the English Wikipedia

“When the encyclopedia reaches 100 thousand articles, the topics for new articles become less and less. When a million articles have already been written, you need to try very well to come up with something new, ”writes Jensen. In the English Wikipedia, meanwhile, there are already more than four million articles.

When the most interesting topics are described, the editors lose interest. In the spring of 2012, 3,300 editors made more than 100 edits per month each - whereas in the spring of 2007 there were 4,800 of them.

Jensen separately focused on the article on the Anglo-American War of 1812, which he himself actively edited. The article, written jointly by three thousand volunteers, contains 14 thousand words. On the discussion page of the article, where editors discuss disagreements (for example, such trifles as who won the war), 600 participants, who wrote 200 thousand words, were noted.

Today, the article on this war has many more readers than in 2008 - 623 thousand compared to 434 thousand - but the number of those who made the changes was reduced from 256 to only 28. Of those 256, only one remained active. The reason, according to Jensen, is that the article has made so many revisions that it has nothing to supplement.

History of editing the article “War of 1812”

The article about the Second World War, which Jensen calls "the most important article on military history," experienced a similar effect.

The history of editing the article “World War II”

“The Wikimedia Foundation has an educational program to turn students into editors. It may be easier to turn them into professors of history, ”says Jensen.

Of course, good Wikipedia content is a great achievement. However, the problem for the project is that while it does not stop needing editors. Wikipedia needs volunteers to combat vandalism and errors. But it will be difficult for her to attract them if there is no interesting work for them. By itself, the fight against vandalism is not.

Jensen believes that there is a way out of this situation: “Wikipedia is now a serious directory with a strong organizational structure and a good reputation. The problem is that it is not serious in a scientific sense. ” He suggests that the foundation promote the work of the participants with scientific journals, their participation in scientific conferences, and perhaps even conduct special training so that they can bring articles to more professional standards.