Has PARC been around for a little while? Have they ever done anything to earn some credibility?


Let's check...

http://encyc.org/wiki/PARC


They invented the GUI... and ethernet? neat.

I realize there's a need for proper scientific analysis of these things, and I don't mean to seem dismissive, but Wikipedia and its various trends aren't something you can understand through numerical analysis. Even if you're only interested in "growth," you can't account for what actually occurs. For example, a single person can create literally thousands of worthless "stub" articles in a very short period of time, just so that he can say he's created more articles than anyone else, and most of these are kept on the site - mostly because of that person's reputation for creating large numbers of articles. If that person decides to simply quit one day, you'll have a significant reduction in the growth rate due solely to that single event.

Besides, it sounds like you're not taking into account the fact that humans are territorial, and the number of topic areas that can be that can be staked out as territories for individual or group control is limited. Ongoing observation suggests that this limit has already been reached, save for new areas that are added as a result of new events, inventions, discoveries, and so on. A traditional mindset might have one thinking that this would be a stabilizing factor, but on Wikipedia, it simply results in more content disputes, more conflict between users, and more gamesmanship, which is countered with more formalization and attempts to impose editorial and behavioral standards. This, in turn, further reduces new-article count.

It's especially important to note that a reduction in Wikipedia growth, by any measure, is a good thing. The more garbage you create, the bigger the mess you have, and the harder it is to dispose of it all when something better comes along.

The editing environment has also changed (it has become more combative and politically charged) though that might prove trickier to gauge by statistical metrics. PARC's ongoing studies of Wiki-conflicts could help shed some light on this aspect of the trend.

I understand your point about measurement of an evolving system being difficult. However, there has been plenty of research in ecology and economics where you can find regularities in collective behavior when viewed both at the macro and micro scales.

I think you'd be surprised at the ability for ecological equations to model population growth, for example, after taking into account of resource constraints, current predator populations, and available food supply and other environmental factors.

Regarding your second point about being territorial, the regularity we observe in the statistics actually relies on the fact that editors are being territorial. This makes their behavior more predictable than random, and results in statistical distributions that we can observe that are different than total chaotic random distributions.

Part 1 of Ed Chi's report garnered a lot of press coverage and commentary here.

The second part of his report has been posted for almost a week. It provides more details.