Is Wikipedia Growing a Longer Tail?

Abstract

Wikipedia has millions of articles, many of which receive little attention. One group of Wikipedians believes these obscure entries should be removed because they are uninteresting and neglected; these are the deletionists. Other Wikipedians disagree, arguing that this long tail of articles is precisely Wikipedia's advantage over other encyclopedias; these are the inclusionists. This paper looks at two overarching questions on the debate between deletionists and inclusionists: (1) What are the implications to the long tail of the evolving standards for article birth and death? (2) How is viewership affected by the decreasing notability of articles in the long tail? The answers to five detailed research questions that are inspired by these overarching questions should help better frame this debate and provide insight into how Wikipedia is evolving.