Is Wikipedia dying?

This is the question I am posing in my review of Andrew Lih’s Wikipedia Revolution in the new issue of Boston Review. Here is a teaser:  “Wikipedia approaches its limits,” ran a striking August 2009 headline in the usually sober Guardian. With infinite storage and lots of free labor, the very notion of “limits” seems ...

This is the question I am posing in my review of Andrew Lih's Wikipedia Revolution in the new issue of Boston Review. Here is a teaser: 

This is the question I am posing in my review of Andrew Lih’s Wikipedia Revolution in the new issue of Boston Review. Here is a teaser: 

“Wikipedia approaches its limits,” ran a striking August 2009 headline in the usually sober Guardian. With infinite storage and lots of free labor, the very notion of “limits” seems misplaced. However, the limits alluded to in the Guardian are more editorial than logistical. The low-hanging fruit is disappearing—Wikipedians can write only so many biographies of Seinfeld characters—and getting new content onto the site is not as easy as it used to be. A recent study by Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) found that Wikipedia’s key growth indicators—the number of new pages and new editors—have floundered for the past two years, while coordination and editing costs have ratcheted up. Today’s Wikipedians waste a growing portion of their editing time on bureaucratic infighting rather than creating new content. According to the PARC study, Wikipedians also exhibit increasing resistance to new content, especially that contributed by occasional editors.

 

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com

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