Reading Assignment #2

The second reading assignment that was given was about Wikipedia and the success of an online, open-source encyclopedia. The article discusses how Wikipedia was successful and the possibilities of the site having peaked in information and popularity.


When the article was published by Time Online, they stated that up until two years ago people were adding at an exponential rate of 2,200 new articles a day. The amount of information in September, 2007 was two million facts/articles. In August, 2009 it was three million and still counting today, just at a much slower rate. Wikipedia is the most popular online information source and has surpassed the Chinese Yongle Encyclopedia as the largest collection of general knowledge.

Besides reaching two million facts in 2007, Wikipedia started to notice that the information that was being published was starting to level off also. Ed Chi, a computer scientist at California’s Palo Alto for Research Center who lab has studied Wikipedia thought it was only a “blip”. In 2009, they realized that it was an actual issue, and the amount of information being published was in fact slowing down.

There are a few explanations that were listed in the reading as to why the information being published on Wikipedia is on the decline. The reasons listed do make sense and I completely agree with their ideas. One of the reasons the article is claiming that information is not being published as much as it once was is because of the volunteers trying to improve the reliability of the information being submitted and preventing online hoaxes. The example they give is John Seigenthaler who stated on Wikipedia that he was once suspected of assassinating John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. I do not see the issue with the decline in the information being posted. I would rather see a decline on published information, if the reliability is now stronger. When Wikipedia was first published and throughout the years, they were not a dominant site to quote reliable facts.

One of the major changes that were implemented was when someone edits information on a living person; it will be reviewed by administrators for reliability before being posted live, prior to the way it was in the past. Everything in the world has trends and this one peaked just like all other trends do. The great thing is Wikipedia is trying to authenticate more of the information that is being submitted. The decline is real, and like the article states, the site simply hit a natural limit of knowledge expansion. That is true in some aspects. Most of the popular information has been submitted and revised, over and over; so in that aspect the knowledge expansion has hit its limit. However, there is a still massive amount of information that has not been published because it is just not an important issue that someone may want to research or look up or even want to post on Wikipedia.

In terms of information being published, even though Wikipedia is on a decline, people still use their web site as a source of knowledge, especially since the information is being authenticated before going live to the world. I think the information will level off or decline even more, but the people who visit the site will not. Different types of people ranging from middle school students, to college students, to people just curious about a topic rely on Wikipedia, so even though the article is stating there is a decline in information, they neglect to discuss how there is no decline in the amount of users. The information being published daily is not as important as how much truth the information has. That in the long run is what will keep Wikipedia a dominant force on the internet for resource information.