Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia that 1400 People Edit

The general consensus on the topic of Wikipedia is that it is edited by a bunch of random people that have nothing better to do than... you know... edit Wikipedia in their spare time.

But is this really the case?

According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, the site is updated largely by a small "community."

"I expected to find something like an 80-20 rule: 80% of the work being done by 20% of the users, just because that seems to come up a lot. But it's actually much, much tighter than that: it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users ... 524 people. ... And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from "people who [are] contributing ... a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix ... or something like that."

In case my Wikipedia-esque sourcing isn't enough. If you look deeper in the sources on the link up there, it comes from speeches and lectures that Wales has done. Speaking of which, wouldn't it be awesome to have the Wikipedia dude give a lecture? All we get is Ralph Nader.

It seems stranges, by the way, that this little fact isn't made more public to Wikipedia users. The fact that a smaller group of more experienced people changing things on the site seems a little more trustworthy than random people changing things on a whim. However, it is stated that a lot of the changes made on the site or done by those random people, albeit small changes for typos and incorrect information.

On the other hand, though, Wales did mention that there are "malicious" Wiki users that purposefully change information. The question is, though, why do they do it?

Because it's hilarious, that's why.

Back to the point, though, the majority of changes are made by a small group and nobody really knows about it. So why doesn't the site just feature those certain individuals? Is the ability for anyone to make the changes they want at anytime truly that important to the site?

Not really. People use Wikipedia because it give you the information you want on the subject you want. Right now. Boom. Plus, it almost always has the same topics you want and there really isn't a substitution for it.

There is Google, but you usually get a bunch of random stuff that you don't want. The only restriction is that people really don't trust the site because of the fact that anyone can change it.

The open dictionary factor is cool, but really just brings the site's ultimate demise. So Wikipedia should just close the site's moderation capabilities. No one cares if anyone can change it just as long as people get the information they want.


Or, they can just keep the site as it is, which is pretty much a gimmick you can use to look things up.