State of Wikipedia report for August 2023

By Josh Greene, CEO, The Mather Group

This month’s Wikipedia Chaos Index score is 66 – the same as last month’s, but for very different reasons.

Though we saw a decline in new page submissions and wait times, there was a noticeable increase in page deletion activities – both nominations and actual deletions.

For the first time since September 2022, overall month-to-month editing activity increased on Wikipedia.

As the backbone of knowledge in the digital world, Wikipedia often finds itself at odds with many different industries and disciplines – including, of course, the many local, regional, national, and global political systems existing in 2023.

In the last month alone, Wikipedia has found a Wisconsin Supreme Court judge trying to whitewash her own page, responded to a letter sent by Durham, Indiana, city attorney trying to publicly identify users editing local politician pages, and was fined by the Russian government for its refusal to delete specific Ukraine-related content from its platform.

This, of course, all occurring while the existential war on the Barbenheimer Talk page raged on – a prescient reminder that Wikipedia, even in an age of misinformation and AI-generated content, remains at both the forefront of culture, and as the foundation for the global pursuit of free speech and shared knowledge.

For more information, contact Josh Greene at josh@themathergroupllc.com

(NOTE: The Chaos Index is a proprietary metric of The Mather Group for measuring turbulence throughout Wikipedia and tracking the community’s current sentiment towards corporate-related pages. The index measures community actions such as editing frequency, content deletion, message board posts, and many other activities that contribute to unstable corporate page environments.)