How is this related to the article? You seem to be talking about public perception of wikipedia while the article mainly focuses on the falling number of active editors.
Also, the public perception is related to the drop of users and vice versa. There has been a lot of negative press lately, specifically related to problems in the community.
The point about there being less new stuff to write about seems apt, what do you think about the counter points that the article had?
"First, as noted above, the vast majority of articles in Wikipedia are still below community standards for “good” articles. Second, underrepresented groups still find it challenging to join. For instance, one study found that only 9% of edits are made by female editors, and that articles of particular interest to women are shorter than articles of interest to men (Lam, 2011). Until editors are representative of the population of potential contributors, it is difficult to argue that the socialization practices are sufficiently effective."
1. Isn't this a moving target? In the beginning, all you had to do was throw up text; standards evolved (and probably continue to, I don't follow it), and now you have to cite references, adhere to standards, etc. As more articles are reviewed, more probably "become" substandard.
2. Is this really a decline issue? I guess it is if you are considering decline not as failure to maintain but failure to grow.
Which is fine, IMO they should just change the name to Webpedia or something if they don't want new edits.
PS: As to being 'full' they have 2.7 million stubs, that's a lot of missing content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
Those problems were recognised and so things are a bit better now, but still.
Yet I cannot remember one technical forum that was as unhelpful as stack-sites sometimes turns into.
Was onerous enough that I quickly found other things to do with my time.
In am extremely small geek bubble. Your non-HN/Reddit neighbors aren't aware of such press.
I'd imagine an S-curve for editors. A few, early adopters in the beginning, then a surge of editors filling in the bulk of articles, then after the majority of articles have been written, a slow decline of need for editors.
I'd imagine the remaining work to be completed would be editorial defense of existing articles and the new amount of articles generated by current events/technology/politics.
Well, in fairness, the declining number of active editors is likely linked to the public perception of Wikipedia.
Teachers and professors hound into students Wikipedia is not for academic use and is full of nonsense and other wrong information.
Most of the time, this is not true.
We would be better off teaching students Wikipedia isn't an appropriate source to cite, but rather a great research tool which links to it's proper sources, which you may cite.
The stigma the education system has built up around Wikipedia is surely effecting the number of people contributing to it.