Volunteers have been departing Wikipedia “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” faster than new ones have been joining. In the first three months of 2009, the English-language Wikipedia suffered a net loss of more than 49,000 editors. One of the reasons is that Wikipedia contributors have been debating widely what is behind the declines in volunteers.

Wikipedia’s is a great example of “crowdsourcing” at work. Crowdsourcing is way for large numbers of people to collaborate, share and aggregate their knowledge, expertise, opinions and insights of many topics without the rules and hierarchies of traditional organizations.

Many volunteers are leaving because they feel as Wikipedia ages many rules have sprung up and it is less freewheeling and collaborative and more like a traditional organization with hierarchy and rules. More>>