…the number of Wikipedia editors is slowly dwindling. “We are not replenishing our ranks,” he said, “it is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important.” According to Wales a lot of the core Wikipedians have simply aged out, got married and found that they have better things to do with their time. Previous rumors of Wikipedias demise have focused on a lack of any new stuff to add; but this seems like a real existential threat.

Wikipedia needs to get cool again, somehow. When Wikipedia launched in the early naughts it was attractively subversive—it pissed off your teachers, journalists and any square over 40, basically. Idealistic young nerds flocked to the site with that early web 2.0 communitarian fervor. But new editors aren’t showing up at the same rate. After years at the top result on practically every Google search, Wikipedia has lost its urgency. Kids who were in 8th grade in 2004 have gone through their entire high school and college careers consulting (i.e. plagiarizing) Wikipedia; to them, Wikipedia is a dull black box—editing it seems just a bit more possible than making revisions to Pride and Prejudice.

And Twitter and Facebook have sucked up all the cognitive surplus younger internet users might have once devoted to building up Wikipedia and shattered it into a million fleeting hashtags…