Jimmy Wales himself shared some self-critical thought on this year’s Wikimania by summarzing the development of decreasing newcomers with the words “maybe we lost the spirit of welcoming people”.
In a Facebook posting Geert Lovink talks about his student project that sought for critical Wikipedia research. He reflected “[t]he assignment also to write a new Wikipedia in a preferred language…. Surprisingly, with the exception of 1 or 2, students had never contributed to Wikipedia. As you can read, their experiences were a mixed bag of anger, frustration and enjoyment after initial bewilderment how complicated it all was. The Wikipedia interface seems outdated and overly complicated. And Dutch editors seem particularly rude in comparison to the English.”
TransnationalSpaces.DoingPublic 