Nearly All of Wikipedia Is Written By Just 1 Percent of Its Editors

Daniel Oberhaus:

At the time of writing, there are roughly 132,000 registered editors who have been active on Wikipedia in the last month (there are also an unknown number of unregistered Wikipedians who contribute to the site). So statistically speaking, only about 1,300 people are creating over three-quarters of the 600 new articles posted to Wikipedia every day.

Of course, these “1 percenters” have changed over the last decade and a half. According to Matei, roughly 40 percent of the top 1 percent of editors bow out about every five weeks. In the early days, when there were only a few hundred thousand people collaborating on Wikipedia, Matei said the content production was significantly more equitable. But as the encyclopedia grew, and the number of collaborators grew with it, a cadre of die-hard editors emerged that have accounted for the bulk of Wikipedia’s growth ever since.