From last weekend’s Wall Street Journal:

Wikipedia has a numbers problem: Its use is growing, but fewer editors are opting to edit the sprawling online encyclopedia. And it isn’t clear how many more editors are needed to sustain the critical mass that Wikipedia and others say is vital to generating accurate, credible information.

There are roughly 3.7 million English-language articles on the encyclosite, with new additions (understandably) and active editors (alarmingly) declining.

Kind of helpful graphic:

Worse news:

Just 35,844 registered editors made five or more edits in June, down 34% from the March 2007 peak. Just a small share of Wikipedia editors—about 3%—account for 85% of the site’s activity, a potential problem, since participation by these heavy users has fallen even more sharply.

Which inevitably means more puff pieces are making their way onto Wikipedia.

Local case in point: This entry from Boston fashion designer Daniel Hernández. It violates two basic Wikipedia principles:

#1: No point of view.

#2: All content must have been previously published.

Hernández’s entry does contain this Wikipedia disclaimer:

This page is a new unreviewed article. This template should be removed once the page has been reviewed by someone other than its creator; if necessary the page should be appropriately tagged for cleanup. If you are the article’s creator, you can seek feedback on your new article. (May 2011)

Right – so three months later no one at Wikipedia has reviewed the page. Not exactly a system that inspires confidence – or credibility – eh?

This is not to pick on Hernández – if I were him, I’d do exactly the same. The fault lies with Wikipedia, which professes to have one set of standards, but exercises another.