Statistical decline Reported, Long awaited demise of Wikipedia at hand? Options

[nobs]

The Foundation list is in a tizzy. Internal statistics for the English Wikipedia have not been compiled since October 2006. Independent analysis shows the activity of the Wikipedia community appears to have been declining during the last 6 months. New users are off 30%

Having absorbed traffic from all previous contenders, we are running up against an insurmountable wall.... That very traffic that we absorbed is no less than the unwashed masses...

[Kato]

The Foundation list is in a tizzy. Internal statistics for the English Wikipedia have not been compiled since October 2006. Independent analysis shows the activity of the Wikipedia community appears to have been declining during the last 6 months. New users are off 30%

This quote from the study is most interesting.

The rate at which edits were being made to Wikipedia articles appears to have peaked in February to April 2007 and declined since. This decline is unprecedented in Wikipedia's history, which has been marked by nearly exponential growth during much of its history. As discussed below, several other statistics show declines beginning around the same period. Though it may be purely coincidental, this time frame also corresponds to the Essjay controversy appearing in the press.

[Somey]

Though it may be purely coincidental, this time frame also corresponds to the Essjay controversy appearing in the press.

That's a rather mean thing for Mr. Flight to say, isn't it? I mean, putting aside the plainly obvious fact that Wikipedia is now firmly into the maintenance phase, in which these sort of statistics are predictable and inevitable, there were other things that happened during that timeframe too - like the whole BADSITES brouhaha, Citizendium, and the totally unfair re-banning of User:Blissyu2, each of which probably caused at least 200,000 WP users to quit in disgust and revulsion. By comparison, the Essjay thing was really more of a blip...

Am I wrong? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smiling.gif)

[the fieryangel]

Though it may be purely coincidental, this time frame also corresponds to the Essjay controversy appearing in the press.

That's a rather mean thing for Mr. Flight to say, isn't it? I mean, putting aside the plainly obvious fact that Wikipedia is now firmly into the maintenance phase, in which these sort of statistics are predictable and inevitable, there were other things that happened during that timeframe too - like the whole BADSITES brouhaha, Citizendium, and the totally unfair re-banning of User:Blissyu2, each of which probably caused at least 200,000 WP users to quit in disgust and revulsion. By comparison, the Essjay thing was really more of a blip...

Am I wrong? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

hmm, I wonder what happened to ED's stats during the same period? What would it mean if those went up?

Anyway, what did they expect? You try to run the riffraff off and you end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They could have had armies of academics working for them, but they ran them all off because of their horrible attitude towards editors. They ran the kids off (remember JzG telling a class of school children that they should find another place to host their page?) and they ran quite a few adults off too by either deleting their contributions, making them feel unwelcome and making everybody who didn't understand what a "diff", "NPOV", "COI" and "AGF" was feel like a complete idiot.

Now, they're upset because their stats are going down?

This is surprising?

...Hopefully, the sponsors will see the same stats and will start giving their money to other, more dynamic organisations, rather than this passé clique of basement dwellers....