Old editors, impersonal rejection and restrictive rules are driving newcomers away from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, report behavioral scientists.
Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," was launched in 2001 and now contains some 23 million articles, according to its own entry.
However, new rules instituted in 2007 to increase the website's quality have driven vital new volunteers away from the effort, report computer scientists led by Aaron Halfaker of the University of Minnesota, in a new study in the American Behavioral Scientist journal. Wikipedia had 50,000 English-language edition editors in 2006, and now has about 35,000, they report.
The way Wikipedia works is that anyone can sign up and start editing entries in the encyclopedia. Other editors and automated screening tools can edit those edits or even reject, or "revert," them back to the entry's original text.
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