In the case of Wikipedia, I think the aspects of quality that correlate most with explaining pageviews are readily proxied by quantity. Specifically, the main quality factors in people reading a Wikipedia page are (a) the existence of the page (!), (b) whether the page has the stuff they were looking for. I proxied the first by number of pages, and the second by length of the pages that already existed. Admittedly, there are a lot more subtleties to quality measurement (which I can go into in depth at some other point) some of which can have indirect, long-term effects on pageviews, but on most of these dimensions Wikipedia hasn’t declined in the last few years (though I think it has grown more slowly than it would with a less dysfunctional mod culture, and arguably too slowly to keep pace with the competition).
Specifically, the main quality factors in people reading a Wikipedia page are (a) the existence of the page (!), (b) whether the page has the stuff they were looking for.
(c) whether the information on the page is accurate.
I proxied the first by number of pages, and the second by length of the pages that already existed.
Except not all topics and not all information are of equal interest to people.
FWIW, my impression is that data on Wikipedia has gotten somewhat more accurate over time, due to the push for more citations, though I think much of this effect occurred before the decline started. I think the push for accuracy has traded off a lot against growth of content (both growth in number of pages and growth in amount of data on each page). These are crude impressions (I’ve read some relevant research but don’t have strong reason to believe that should be decisive in this evaluation) but I’m curious to hear what specific impressions you have that are contrary to this.
If you have more fine-grained data at your disposal on different topics and how much each has grown or shrunk in terms of number of pages, data available on each page, and accuracy, please share :).
You seem to be conflating quantity and quality.
In the case of Wikipedia, I think the aspects of quality that correlate most with explaining pageviews are readily proxied by quantity. Specifically, the main quality factors in people reading a Wikipedia page are (a) the existence of the page (!), (b) whether the page has the stuff they were looking for. I proxied the first by number of pages, and the second by length of the pages that already existed. Admittedly, there are a lot more subtleties to quality measurement (which I can go into in depth at some other point) some of which can have indirect, long-term effects on pageviews, but on most of these dimensions Wikipedia hasn’t declined in the last few years (though I think it has grown more slowly than it would with a less dysfunctional mod culture, and arguably too slowly to keep pace with the competition).
(c) whether the information on the page is accurate.
Except not all topics and not all information are of equal interest to people.
FWIW, my impression is that data on Wikipedia has gotten somewhat more accurate over time, due to the push for more citations, though I think much of this effect occurred before the decline started. I think the push for accuracy has traded off a lot against growth of content (both growth in number of pages and growth in amount of data on each page). These are crude impressions (I’ve read some relevant research but don’t have strong reason to believe that should be decisive in this evaluation) but I’m curious to hear what specific impressions you have that are contrary to this.
If you have more fine-grained data at your disposal on different topics and how much each has grown or shrunk in terms of number of pages, data available on each page, and accuracy, please share :).