The online encyclopedia Wikipedia isn’t attracting contributors like it used to. Founder Jimmy Wales told the Associated Press that the company isn’t replenishing its writers and editors.
From the AP:
Despite Wikipedia’s wide-reaching popularity, Wales said the typical profile of a contributor is ‘a 26-year-old geeky male’ who moves on to other ventures, gets married and leaves the website. Other contributors leave because, 10 years after the website was launched, there are fewer new entries to add, he said.
Apparently, adding new entries is also really complicated.
Wikipedia is developing strategies to attract new talent–including asking university profs to assign writing Wikipedia entries to their students, and adding a new feature called WikiLove that rewards page contributors by sending them pictures of kittens, stars and baklava.
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