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>>unquot+(OP)
People come to Wikipedia to get an answer. Many users of Wikipedia are kids, or non-native English speakers for whom contributing is a challenge. Or laymen that don't know about the subject and naturally don't feel like they could contribute anything. Or people who simply don't know how to contribute. Or people visiting via mobiles where it's really difficult to research and contribute. If you adjust for all those users that could not reasonably contribute, the percentage of contributors is much higher.

There are other factors at play at Wikipedia too. In my native language, Danish, Wikipedia is all but dead. Years ago, I tried contributing within my own field. I researched and spent hours adding relevant information to different topics, only to find out a few days after that all my contributions had been deleted by the administrators.

Here is the Danish site for one of the most beloved Danes: https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Laudrup

Here is the English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Laudrup

It's just one example, but it is true for culture, history and many other areas. If you want to know anything on Danish matters, the English Wikipedia is usually a much better option than the Danish.

>>flexie+U2
Deletionism is the thing that will kill Wikipedia, by deleting itself and gradually narrowing the circle of permitted contributors.

There are some situations where the non-English Wikipedias have far more information than the English ones though, because of how "notability" works.

>>pjc50+g7
The number of Wikipedia articles is steadily increasing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia

Deleting articles doesn't prevent anyone from participating, since anyone can write/edit articles on any notable subject. The deletion process protects Wikipedia from search engine marketers who try to promote their clients with biased low-quality content. They can go to Quora for that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Reas...

>>common+oa
At one point I was playing Serious Sam, an FPS. I finished the game and let the credits roll by, noticing a quirky name "Derek Smart". I searched for it on Wikipedia and arrived at the eponymous article, describing the life and creative work of a rash and stubborn but obviously ambitious and talented video game designer.

A bit later on, there was Croteam, the maker of Serious Sam, AMA on Reddit so I asked them if the reference to Derek Smart was an inside joke or what. The reply was along the lines of "he's a dear friend of ours and our inspiration". I went back to the Derek Smart Wikipedia article, pointed out the screenshot of the credits with Derek's name, the AMA reply and asked a very innocuous question: "Can we put this in the article?"

I got a reply that what I did is termed "original research" and the only acceptable way to include the reference would be if some noteworthy third party, such as Washington Times, mentions and explains the connection, meaning all the work I did up to that point was in vain. That's when I completely gave up on editing Wikipedia as it seemed to me, and still does, absolutely Sisyphean. Editors of that article then went on to argue how to phrase the incident where Derek Smart assaulted a vending machine to best fit the article.

The implication of "no original research" and "noteworthy sources of information" means a large mass of regional events and persons can't be included in the English Wikipedia unless they clear this arbitrary bar of noteworthiness that can still be gamed with ease: a) be an employee of a mainstream news source, b) publish a biased article on any given topic, c) create an anonymous Wikipedia account, d) create an article on the topic or edit an exiting one to embed the information you published and e) marvel as Wikipedia editors revert the changes under the guise of preventing vandalism.

Automated edit-correction tools are another grave issue for Wikipedia, as they instantly revert an article to its sanctioned version set by a reputable Wikipedia editor. How is Wikipedia "an encyclopedia anyone can edit" again?