Wikipedia: Mid-life crisis or energetic kid?
Jinfo Blog

By Jan Knight

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Wikipedia just had its 10^th birthday! That would make most of us just a kid but a recent Economist article, Wiki Birthday To You describes the free online crowdsourced encyclopedia  as middle-aged and “already starting to look rather stiff”. It describes how Wikipedia was originally an offshoot of another online encyclopedia, Nupedia, this one written by experts. The idea of opening up contributions to others came about in order to increase content at a faster rate – which certainly happened. However, the Economist article cites a belief that the website has become bureaucratic, discouraging new users from contributing.  The number of regular contributors as well as the number of articles added or edited is levelling off. This has been described by the creator as “a sign of maturity” as the project becomes more complete. Others perceive this maturity and bureaucracy as “uninviting” and “insular”.

Currently, Wikipedia has over 17million articles in 270 languages and it’s one of the top 10 biggest sites on the web. According to The Pew Internet & American Life Project, the number of American adults who use Wikipedia to look for information increased from 25% in 2007 to 42% in May 2010. This translates into about 53% of adult internet users.

Whether you think Wikipedia is having a mid-life crisis or not, it does seem to be in the mood to try some new things. It’s just introduced two initiatives. WikiLove: An Experiment in Appreciation works in a similar manner to the  “Like” on Facebook. It’s an experiment in appreciation that was first tested on a prototype site but is supposed to be on the English Wikipedia any day.  It provides a way to show appreciation for other users whether it’s by welcoming new users or inviting them to participate in new discussions.

The Atlantic calls WikiLove an absurd experiment and an attempt to convince contributors that their input is appreciated.

Another new initiative is the Participation Challenge which has been described as a “data modelling competition to develop an algorithm that predicts future editing activity”. The goal of this is to have a better understanding of why people choose to edit Wikipedia or choose not to.

Even professional information and research professionals have to admit to using Wikipedia now and then. Who can deny that it’s often a great place to get an initial overview of a new topic.  I teach people to scan it and then skip to the references and citations at the bottom to go and find authoritative sources. We all know the caveats of it not being authoritative or accurate and sometimes know that entries might be totally erroneous, but it’s still a viable tool if used wisely.

Middle-aged it may be but with its ongoing creative initiatives, it appears to have the energy of a little kid!

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