For example, Enterprise will deliver the real-time changes and comprehensive data dumps in a compatible format. There will also be a level of customer service typical of business arrangements but unprecedented for the volunteer-directed project: a number for its customers to call, a guarantee of certain speeds for delivering the data, a team of experts assigned to solve specific technical flaws.
However, the foundation officials shepherding the Enterprise project argue that Wikipedia would be foolish to disengage from the big companies, since they provide the primary ways for people to read its articles. By offering more useful data, Enterprise will help ensure that commercial operators display the latest, most accurate version of articles and crack down on vandalism quicker. They should be required to help sustain the resources that their businesses rely on—like a logger planting trees.
Similarly, Wikipedia can use the contracts to insist that it be credited in certain ways and to help direct volunteers to the site. Once you concede that big platforms will control the flow of commerce and information online, you can focus on how to get your cut.
A proud Silicon Valley holdout, the Wikimedia Foundation is finally doing just that. But of course, for a project like Wikipedia and other industries whose products have been siphoned by the platforms, the flip side of Big Tech-funded stability is the threat of dependency. Wikipedia will now necessarily be orienting itself to the demands of the commercial internet, even if it comes in return for sizable payments to support a better, stronger, more diverse community.
The number of active editors on the English-language Wikipedia peaked in at more than 51, and has been declining ever since as the supply of new ones got choked off. This past summer only 31, people could be considered active editors. The results paint a numerical picture of a community dominated by bureaucracy. Over the same period, the proportion of those deletions made by automated tools rather than humans grew.
Unsurprisingly, the data also indicate that well-intentioned newcomers are far less likely to still be editing Wikipedia two months after their first try. Because Wikipedia has failed to replenish its supply of editors, its skew toward technical, Western, and male-dominated subject matter has persisted.
In , researchers from the University of Minnesota and three other schools showed that articles worked on mostly by female editors—which presumably were more likely to be of interest to women—were significantly shorter than those worked on mostly by male editors or by men and women equally. Another study, from the University of Oxford, found that 84 percent of entries tagged with a location were about Europe or North America.
Antarctica had more entries than any nation in Africa or South America. But after a few minutes discussing the issue, it is clear that she believes Wikipedia needs help. One idea being tested offers newcomers suggestions about what to work on, steering them toward easy tasks such as copyediting articles that need it.
The hope is this will give people time to gain confidence before they break a rule and experience the tough side of Wikipedia. These might seem like small changes, but it is all but impossible for the foundation to get the community to support bigger adjustments. Nothing exemplifies this better than the effort to introduce the text editing approach that most people are familiar with: the one found in everyday word processing programs.
It rolled out in a site-wide trial in July, with the expectation that it would soon become a permanent fixture. After the foundation made Visual Editor the default way to edit entries, Wikipedians rebelled and complained of bugs in the software.
In September, a Request for Comment, a survey of the community, concluded that the new interface should be hidden by default. The foundation gave in. It made Visual Editor opt-in rather than opt-out—meaning that the flagship project to help newcomers is in fact invisible to newcomers, unless they dig through account settings to switch the new interface on. Many opponents of Visual Editor dispute the idea that it will help Wikipedia. Like some other vocal Wikipedians, he considers it patronizing to say that wikitext keeps out certain people.
Moran says Visual Editor was rolled out without enough input from the people providing the voluntary labor Wikipedia is built on. It would have to be led by Wikipedians, and the most active volunteers have come to rely on bureaucratic incantations. In July , some editors started a page called WikiProject Editor Retention with the idea of creating a place to brainstorm ideas about helping newcomers and fostering a friendlier atmosphere.
Public Good Even though Wikipedia has far fewer active editors than it did in its heyday, the number and length of its articles continue to grow. Of 5, Wikipedians from all language editions of the project, 50 percent contributed more than one hour a day, and 20 percent edited for three or more hours a day.
Jimmy Wales, now just a regular Wikipedian but still influential with editors and the Wikimedia Foundation, dismisses suggestions that the project will get worse. Indeed, larger cultural trends will probably make it a challenge to appeal to a broader section of the public. As commercial websites have risen to prominence, online life has moved away from open, self-governed crowdsourcing communities like the one that runs Wikipedia, says Clay Shirky, a professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University.
Shirky was one of the biggest boosters of an idea, popular during the previous decade, that the Web encouraged strangers to come together and achieve things impossible for a conventional organization. Wikipedia is proof there was some truth to that notion.
Outside specific settings like massive multiplayer games, relatively few people mingle in shared virtual space. After all, the site's content is generated by thousands of volunteer contributors who don't get paid for their work. What people tend to forget is the fact that running a website of Wikipedia's size roughly 15 billion pageviews per month costs a lot of money.
As our chart illustrates, the foundation's expenses have risen steadily over the years. Critics of Wikipedia's fundraising often bemoan the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation is growing richer every year. However, it is not uncommon for a charitable organization of that size to build financial reserves in order to be guarded against an unexpected shortfall in donations at some point. Check our upcoming releases. Feel free to contact us anytime using our contact form or visit our FAQ page.
Need infographics, animated videos, presentations, data research or social media charts? More Information. Skip to main content. Single Accounts Corporate Solutions Universities. Follow Statista. Felix Richter. Description This chart shows how much money the Wikimedia Foundation received in the form donations and contributions since
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