Who Writes Wikipedia?

So, in the article it's claimed that Wales wanted to do a study using this method, and (implied) if appropriate, revise his conclusion. This is four years ago, anyone knows if that happened? Edited to add: One thing that has been annoying me a little, is when articles, regardless of their quality, are deleted because they lack notoriety. If these deletes adhere to the conclusions in this article (written by an outsider, then deleted by an insider, rather than both…

Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. The problem is that, as a community, Wikipedia has gone out of its way to do…

A lot has happened since this 2006 essay was posted, but as a Wikipedian I can confirm that most Wikipedia articles suffer from editing by too few editors, from too narrow a subset of the world population. And too few editors, to this day, know how to look up good sources for making articles better. (Basis of knowledge: I have won the Million Award more than once on Wikipedia for bringing a high-page-view article up to better article quality, as…