According to research conducted by Felipe Ortega at Libresoft, a research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Wikipedia suffered a net loss of 49,000 contributors in the first three months of 2009. That compared to a loss of 4,900 contributors during the same period in 2008. (View the report – PDF, 9MB).
根据马德里Rey Juan Carlos大学研究小组Libresoft的Felipe Ortega进行的研究，2009年的前三个月， Wikipedia净亏损了49,000名贡献者。相比之下，同期亏损了4,900名贡献者在2008年。( 查看报告– PDF，9MB )。
The media pounced on the report as evidence Wikipedia was failing. The news was full of rash statements such as “contributors are leaving in unprecedented numbers”, “it’s definitely a worrying trend”, “editors are becoming disenchanted”, “the Wikipedia project could be starting to stall”, and “the site could vanish”.
媒体猛烈抨击该报告，以为维基百科失败了。 这个新闻充斥着轻率的言论，例如“贡献者正在以前所未有的数量离开” ， “这绝对是一个令人担忧的趋势” ， “编辑变得迷惑不解” ， “ Wikipedia项目可能开始停滞”以及“该网站可能消失” ” 。
It’s utter nonsense. Wikipedia remains one of the most popular sites on the web and is valuable source of plagiarism for every homework-hating student! Over 14 million articles have been published, it’s normally at the top of Google searches, and receives 325 million visits every month.
完全是胡说八道。 维基百科仍然是网络上最受欢迎的网站之一，并且是每位讨厌作业的学生抄袭的宝贵来源！ 已经发表了超过1400万篇文章，通常是Google搜索的顶部，每个月的访问量为3.25亿次。
I suspect we’re observing a case of diminishing returns. When Wikipedia started, there was just one page so it’s initial growth was exponential. However, now there are 3 million articles in English alone; how easy is it for contributors to find a topic that hasn’t already been covered in considerable depth?
我怀疑我们正在观察收益递减的情况。 维基百科开始时只有一页，因此它的初始增长是指数级的。 但是，现在仅英语就有300万篇文章。 对于贡献者来说，找到尚未深入探讨的主题有多容易？
In addition, Wikipedia has evolved from a free-for-all into a more secure information resource. In the early days, it lured spammers and vandals who added or modified a significant number of pages. Those activities have been mostly banished, so frivolous updates are far less likely.
此外，维基百科已经从“免费提供”发展为更加安全的信息资源。 在早期，它诱使添加或修改了大量页面的垃圾邮件发送者和破坏者。 这些活动大部分都被放逐了，因此更新的可能性很小。
Finally, I’d question how the data was analyzed. How do you know that a contributor has left forever?
最后，我想问一下如何分析数据。 您怎么知道贡献者永远离开了？
Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales has also responded to the reports:
维基百科的联合创始人吉米·威尔士也对报告做出了回应：
Our internal numbers don’t confirm all the claims made … the number of active editors across all projects is stable and new editors are replaced at about the same pace as existing editors are leaving.
我们的内部数字不能确认所有声明……各个项目中活跃的编辑人员数量稳定，并且新编辑人员的替换速度与现有编辑人员离开的速度相同。
It’s important to note that Dr Ortega’s study of editing patterns defines an editor as anyone who made a single edit, however experimental. This results in a total count of three million editors. We choose to define editors as people who have made at least 5 edits. By our narrower definition, just under a million people are counted as editors.
重要的是要注意，奥尔特加博士对编辑模式的研究将编辑者定义为进行单个编辑但无论是实验性操作的任何人。 这样一来，编辑总数便达到了300万。 我们选择将编辑者定义为至少进行过5次编辑的人。 按照我们的狭义定义，不到一百万的人被认为是编辑。
You can’t keep growing forever – there are only so many people on the internet.
您无法永远保持增长–互联网上只有那么多人。
Do you think Wikipedia is failing? Or is this simply a case of old-media journalists wishing its demise?
您认为维基百科失败了吗？ 还是这只是旧媒体记者希望其消亡的案例？
翻译自: https://www.sitepoint.com/wikipedia-not-losing-contributors/
