State of Wikipedia report for December 2024
The final Chaos Index of 2024 sits at 70, a 13% increase over the previous month.
The main driver of this change is a noticeable surge in new page submissions; after a substantial decline in November, December saw those levels rise, alongside the expected rise in wait times and declined pages.
After a quiet summer, Wikipedia’s editing pace remains fervorous to close out 2024, reflecting some of the busiest editing periods we’ve seen in recent memory.
2024 has seen a significant increase in the number of Conflict of Interest requests made on Talk pages across Wikipedia – and alongside it, a small editorial movement to quell these requests through aggressive responses and punitive editing, making it as good a time as any to review the most important parts of a quality COI request:
1. Declare your conflict of interest: without an account declaring a conflict of interest, any Talk page requests will be ignored.
2. Adhere to the rules: when making requests, avoid first-party sources (company websites, any press releases or PR reprints) and flowery language, like “revolutionary”, “industry leading” or “transformative”. This also goes for formatting – review Wikipedia’s rules on formatting COI requests properly before making a single request.
3. Don’t fall into the trap: the final thing to remember is to not take the bait. Wikipedia editors will goad COI volunteers into drastic language or behavior, then use that as evidence against their content requests. Keep requests simple, be responsive to feedback – and if an editor is being abusive, find the right avenue to facilitate mediation.
Keep these tips in mind as the pillars of a strong 2025 strategy for Wikipedia.
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.
