Wiki, Losing Contributors
Saw this and thought it worth a read:
“Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is written entirely by volunteers and allows anyone to edit its entries, is losing contributors, its founder complained Thursday.
Speaking with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the website’s annual conference, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the nonprofit company that runs the site is scrambling to simplify editing procedures in an attempt to retain volunteers.
“We are not replenishing our ranks,” said Wales. “It is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important.”
Administrators of the Internet’s fifth most visited website are working to simplify the way users can contribute and edit material. “A lot of it is convoluted,” Wales said. “A lot of editorial guidelines … are impenetrable to new users.”
Wikipedia has more than 3 million entries but has been marred by subjective entries and pranks. Even so, Wikipedia cites studies that compare the website’s accuracy favorably to more conventional encyclopedias, while other studies give it lower marks.
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. “
The comments at Slashdot are probably nearer the truth.
ModernityBlog 
Whatever happened to those civilian psychological warfare operatives who were recruited a couple of years ago by US Special Forces Command. Now there’s a ready pool of “new” editors for Jimbo to draw on. Though of course it;s top-secret so we’ll never know, will we? The editors would be “controlled by managers reporting to SOCOM based in US regional command HQs around the world – managers holding US Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information clearances, with “extensive public diplomacy, journalism, and media-relations skills”.
USSOCOM’s Joint Military Information Support Command’s objective is to facilitate “culturally-attuned international engagement”, while orchestrating a 24/7 multi-media campaign formatted to the cultures and languages of relevant audiences, to provide “an alternative to the extremist ideology for global audiences (in) a tough, entrenched war of ideas.” See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/16/socom_psyops_against_uk/
Click to access Olson%2003-04-08.pdf
stan
20/08/2011 at 18:59