Millions has used Wikipedia but far fewer have created content for Wikipedia and the usefulness of Wikipedia could be undermined as thousands of volunteer researchers abandon the site.  This poster child for user generated content is starting to show signs of aging.

Wikipedia is a free internet encyclopedia and is the fifth most popular website in the world with about 325 million visits a month.  However it is built upon the energy and goodwill of volunteer content writers and Wikipedia editors seem to be moving on to new pastures according to research by Felipe Ortega, from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. Ortega analysed data on the editing histories of its more than three million active Wikipedia contributors in 10 languages and found that "in the first three months of 2009, the English-language Wikipedia suffered a net loss of more than 49,000 editors, compared to a net loss of 4,900 during the same period a year earlier," reports The Wall Street Journal.

Theories abound as to why the sudden departures. 

Some, like Andrew Dalby, author of The World And Wikipedia: How We Are Editing Reality, believe this to be a result of increased bureaucracy.  In theory these new levels of approval are designed to prevent errors  -  such as the death of United States Senator Edward Kennedy being announced prematurely.  Dalby notes that "Wikipedia grew because of the lack of rules. That has been forgotten. The rules are regarded as irritating and useless by many contributors."

Another theory is that Wikipedia, which was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales, has become part of the establishment and thus is less attractive to a volunteer crowd. Ortega believes that the volunteer editors "don't feel the spirit of the first years."

Another issue is the reliability of Wikipedia. Many journalists have been exposed as having used Wikipedia for information for their stories- without fact checking the gathered information.  This was true when Shane Fitzgerald, an Irish student, saw a fake statement he'd imbedded in Maurice Jarre's page shortly after the French composer's death show up in many major newspapers.  Fitzgerald had the intention " to show that journalists use Wikipedia as a primary source and to demonstrate the power the Internet has over newspaper reporting. This experiment proved to be very quote the succes as the quotation appeared in newspapers in the UK, the US, India, and Australia. 

Mr Ortega, who created a programme analysing the editing history of more than three million Wikipedia contributors, told The Times: 'If you don't have enough people to take care of the project it could vanish quickly. "We're not in that situation yet. But eventually, if the negative trends follow, we could be in that situation.'

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