The decline happened as a result of my indefinite banishment from Wikipedia. How many page views did I generate when I was active on Wikipedia? A lot more than I generate now that I’m banned!
I’m kinda kidding around but there’s more than a kernel of truth in there. When Wikipedia was first created… there were more than a gazillion bits of knowledge missing. Over time though… the “easiest” bits were filled in. As all the lowest hanging fruit was picked… there were less and less people tall enough to reach the higher fruit. Clearly this resulted in a significant decrease in editing activity and by extension… a decrease in page views.
What percentage of the total decline in page views does this explanation actually account for? Beats me. It has to account for some though.
On a tangentially related note… a few weeks after famous economists die… I like to try and grab a screenshot of the page views for their Wikipedia entries. Their page views have a huge spike as their life/death is widely discussed… but then the page views decline pretty quickly afterwards. Unfortunately, in too many cases I’ve forgotten to grab screenshots. And the graph doesn’t look as good when you have to go back in time. :( Why economists? Well… I think they’d appreciate it more than most famous dead people. Plus, it could be interesting/informative to compare their graphs in order to try and discern some useful information about something… economical.
What percentage of the total decline in page views does this explanation actually account for? Beats me. It has to account for some though.
I did find this...
The number of active editors on the English-language Wikipedia peaked in 2007 at more than 51,000 and has been declining ever since as the supply of new ones got choked off. This past summer only 31,000 people could be considered active editors. - The Decline of Wikipedia
That confirms a decline in editors… and by extension… a decline in edits/pageviews… but no idea what fraction of the total pageviews decline it represents. It’s probably pretty small.
The Google explanation probably represents a much higher fraction. For a while Wikipedia seemed to frequently be at the top of numerous search results. This would of course equate to considerable pageviews. Now it seems like Wikipedia results aren’t as frequently as high as they used to be.
The decline happened as a result of my indefinite banishment from Wikipedia. How many page views did I generate when I was active on Wikipedia? A lot more than I generate now that I’m banned!
I’m kinda kidding around but there’s more than a kernel of truth in there. When Wikipedia was first created… there were more than a gazillion bits of knowledge missing. Over time though… the “easiest” bits were filled in. As all the lowest hanging fruit was picked… there were less and less people tall enough to reach the higher fruit. Clearly this resulted in a significant decrease in editing activity and by extension… a decrease in page views.
What percentage of the total decline in page views does this explanation actually account for? Beats me. It has to account for some though.
On a tangentially related note… a few weeks after famous economists die… I like to try and grab a screenshot of the page views for their Wikipedia entries. Their page views have a huge spike as their life/death is widely discussed… but then the page views decline pretty quickly afterwards. Unfortunately, in too many cases I’ve forgotten to grab screenshots. And the graph doesn’t look as good when you have to go back in time. :( Why economists? Well… I think they’d appreciate it more than most famous dead people. Plus, it could be interesting/informative to compare their graphs in order to try and discern some useful information about something… economical.
In exchange for my explanation… how about you try and resolve Satt’s Paradox? Or, you can try and predict if/when/how quarters up are going to replace thumbs up.
This would rely on a large fraction of pageviews being from Wikipedia editors. That seems unlikely. Got any data for that?
No data, like I said...
I did find this...
That confirms a decline in editors… and by extension… a decline in edits/pageviews… but no idea what fraction of the total pageviews decline it represents. It’s probably pretty small.
The Google explanation probably represents a much higher fraction. For a while Wikipedia seemed to frequently be at the top of numerous search results. This would of course equate to considerable pageviews. Now it seems like Wikipedia results aren’t as frequently as high as they used to be.