The free Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia is struggling under mass uploading with too few editors to control the site quality under the new structure.
“Several changes the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have ironically crippled the very growth they were designed to manage,” the American Behavioural Scientist said last week.
Contributors and volunteered editors have plunged 37.5 percent within five years, according to a study by Aaron Halfaker of the University of Minnesota. From 2007 to 2012, the number of collaborators have declined from 56,000 to 35,000.
The decrease in interaction has been owed to the tightened structure that the website has imposed, following harsh criticism on published mistakes.
Research shows that contributors are easily discouraged when their posts get deleted.
The fact that Wikipedia is available in 258 languages does not help the control problems either.
Broader access to global Internet surfers as from 2001 was part of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales’s plans of expansion.
However, the recent research concluded that “Wikipedia has changed from ‘the encyclopedia that anyone can edit’ to ‘the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes him or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semi-automated rejection and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit,” said AFP.
Further reasons for decline include the increase of auto-editing bots and algorithmic tools to simplify the selection process.
HumanIPO reported in December that WikiAfrica has been working on plans to make its content available to African kids for free.
