Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages

Jimmy Wales, founder of the online encyclopedia, which is written and edited by volunteers.

Nicolas Goldberg for The Wall Street Journal

Wikipedia.org is the fifth-most-popular Web site in the world, with roughly 325 million monthly visitors. But unprecedented numbers of the millions of online volunteers who write, edit and police it are quitting.

That could have significant implications for the brand of democratization that Wikipedia helped to unleash over the Internet -- the empowerment of the amateur.

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