In the history of the web, last spring may figure as a tipping point.
That's when Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"--a
site that grew from 100,000 articles in 2003 to more than 15 million
today--began to falter as a social movement. Thousands of volunteer
editors, the loyal Wikipedians who actually write, fact-check, and
update all those articles, logged off--many for good. For the first time,
more contributors appeared to be dropping out than joining up. Activity
on the site has remained stagnant, according to a spokesperson for the
Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind the site, and it's become "a
really serious issue." So serious, in fact, that this fall Wikipedia
will turn to something it has never needed before: recruiters....
That's why Wikipedia's new recruiting push will not rely merely on
highfalutin promises about pooled greatness and "the sum of all human
knowledge." Instead, the organization is hoping to get students to write
and edit entries as part of their coursework. The Wikimedia Foundation
teamed up with eight professors at schools including George Washington
and Princeton to integrate the once frowned-upon research tool into
public-policy curricula. As part of the program, Wikipedia's "campus
ambassadors" will lead in-class training sessions on how to edit the
site and help start Wikipedia student groups....
But with three out of four American households online, contributions to
the hive mind can seem a bit passé, and Web participation, well,
boring--kind of like writing encyclopedia entries for free....
Amateur blogs, the original embodiment of Web democracy, are showing
signs of decline. While professional bloggers are "a rising class,"
according to Technorati, hobbyists are in retreat, and about 95 percent
of blogs are launched and quickly abandoned. A recent Pew study found
that blogging has withered as a pastime, with the number of 18- to
24-year-olds who identify themselves as bloggers declining by half
between 2006 and 2009....
Citizen journalism also has stabilized. Fewer than one in 10 Web users
say they have created their own original news or opinion piece,
according to Pew, and comment sections on blogs or mainstream media
sites, which were supposed to turn the old one-way media model into a
two-way street, are often too profane, hateful, or off-point to attract
people. Only one in four Web users has left a comment--probably no more
than wrote letters to the editor in decades past, says Brian Thornton, a
University of North Florida professor who has studied the history of
the letters page....
Consumer-review sites like Yelp, Amazon, and Epinions, which use an army
of amateur critics to cover products and services, offer elaborate
appreciation programs that reward their unpaid people and keep users
engaged. Yelp has more than 40 "community managers" scattered around the
world, who throw parties for prolific reviewers....
(originally posted 9-1-10)
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