Predictions of the end of Wikipedia

Various publications and commentators have offered a range of predictions of the end of Wikipedia since it rose to prominence. Multiple potential dangers have been proposed, such as a lack of quality-control and inconsistent editors/administrators.

Many online encyclopedias exist. Some have been proposed as replacements for Wikipedia, including Google's since-closed Knol, WolframAlpha, and AOL's since-closed Owl. The development of artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence in Wikimedia projects has prompted predictions that AI applications which consume Wikipedia's free and open content will also replace Wikipedia.

In a 2013 article for the ''MIT Technology Review'', Tom Simonite listed issues such as hoaxes, vandalism, an imbalance of material, and inadequate quality control on articles. Christopher Dawson wrote on vulgar content and absence of sufficient references on articles in a 2008 article on ZDNET. Others suggest that the unwarranted deletion of useful articles from Wikipedia may portend its end. That brought about the creation of Deletionpedia, which itself ceased to exist in 2008 and was relaunched in 2013.

However, contrary to these predictions, Wikipedia has constantly grown in both size and influence.

Personnel

Wikipedia is crowdsourced by a few million volunteer editors. And although Wikipedia has millions of registered editors, only tens of thousands' contributions make up majority of its contents, and fewer thousands do quality control and maintenance work. As the encyclopedia expanded in the 2010s, the number of active editors did not steadily grow and sometimes declined. Various sources have predicted that Wikipedia will eventually have too few editors to be functional and collapse from lack of participation.

English Wikipedia has volunteer administrators who perform various functions, including functions similar to those carried out by a forum moderator. Critics described their actions as harsh, bureaucratic, biased, unfair, or capricious and predicted that the resulting outrage would lead to the site's closure.

Various 2012 articles reported that a decline in English Wikipedia's recruitment of new administrators could end Wikipedia.

Decline in editors

A 2014 trend analysis published in ''The Economist'' stated that "The number of editors for the English-language version has fallen by a third in seven years." The attrition rate for active editors in English Wikipedia was described by ''The Economist'' as substantially higher than in other languages (non-English Wikipedias). It reported that in other languages, the number of "active editors" (those with at least five edits per month) has been relatively constant since 2008: some 42,000 editors, with narrow seasonal variances of about 2,000 editors up or down.

In the English Wikipedia, the number of active editors peaked in 2007 at about 50,000 editors, and fell to 30,000 editors in 2014.

Given that the trend analysis published in ''The Economist'' presented the number of active editors for Wikipedia in other languages (non-English Wikipedia) as remaining relatively constant, sustaining their numbers at approximately 42,000 active editors, the contrast pointed to the effectiveness of Wikipedia in those languages to retain their active editors on a renewable and sustained basis. Though different language versions of Wikipedia have different policies, no comment identified a particular policy difference as potentially making a difference in the rate of editor attrition for English Wikipedia. Editor count showed a slight uptick a year later, and no clear trend after that.

In a 2013 article, Tom Simonite of ''MIT Technology Review'' said that for several years running the number of Wikipedia editors had been falling and cited the bureaucratic structure and rules as a factor. Simonite alleged that some Wikipedians use the labyrinthine rules and guidelines to dominate others and have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. A January 2016 article in ''Time'' by Chris Wilson said Wikipedia might lose many editors because a collaboration of occasional editors and smart software will take the lead.

Andrew Lih