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自愿編輯者流失 維基百科遭遇“成長危機”
Wikipedia Is Slowly Dying
[ 2011-08-05 15:12 ]
維基百科聯合創始人吉米·威爾斯（Jimmy Wales）周四表示，老一批的維基百科自由編輯者近年來由于結婚或者興趣轉移等原因漸漸離開了維基，而新加入者的數量又遠少于離開者，因此維基百科目前正面臨青黃不接的境地。編輯流失的另一個原因可能是，大量詞條現在幾乎是完整的，或至少公眾認為它們是完整的。鑒于此，只有少數用戶覺得有必要對維基百科做出自己的貢獻。
Jimmy Wales, the iconoclastic founder of Wikipedia, made a troubling announcement at the 7th annual Wikipedia conference: Nobody wants to edit Wikipedia anymore. Is Wikipedia going to shrivel up and fade away?
Wales told the AP that the number of Wikipedia editors is slowly dwindling. "We are not replenishing our ranks," he said, "it is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important." According to Wales a lot of the core Wikipedians have simply aged out, got married and found that they have better things to do with their time. Previous rumors of Wikipedias demise have focused on a lack of any new stuff to add; but this seems like a real existential threat.
Wikipedia needs to get cool again, somehow. When Wikipedia launched in the early naughts it was attractively subversive—it pissed off your teachers, journalists and any square over 40, basically. Idealistic young nerds flocked to the site with that early web 2.0 communal fervor. But new editors aren't showing up at the same rate. After years at the top result on practically every Google search, Wikipedia has lost its urgency. Kids who were in 8th grade in 2004 have gone through their entire high school and college careers consulting (i.e. plagiarizing) Wikipedia; to them, Wikipedia is a dull black box—editing it seems just a bit more possible than making revisions to Pride and Prejudice.
And Twitter and Facebook have sucked up all the cognitive surplus younger internet users might have once devoted to building up Wikipedia and shattered it into a million fleeting hashtags. Wikipedia should try to somehow harness the new fickle hive mind: Remember when hordes of Beliebers descended on Esperanza Spalding's Wikipedia page and ravaged it after she beat out Justin Bieber for the Grammy? All you've got to do is get 15-year-old girls as interested in, say, Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Good luck with that, Jimmy Wales!
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（來源：gawker.com 編輯：崔旭燕）
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