The English version of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has lost over 50,000 authors this year.

The daily The Times welcomes the exodus: “The persistent decline in the number of Wikipedia editors may signal the end of the dominance of a remarkable online resource. It cannot happen too soon.

… Wikipedia is routinely cited in online articles as a substitute for explanations of concepts, events and people. It has thereby coarsened public culture. It is an anti-intellectual venture to its core. Knowledge is democratic in the sense that no one has the right to claim the last word.

Wikipedia is democratic in the different and corrosive sense that anyone can join in regardless of competence. Every editor’s contribution is of equal value. That is an affront to the notion of disinterested intellectual inquiry. What Wikipedia prizes is not greater approximations to truth but a greater degree of consensus. That ethos undermines Wikipedia in principle as a reference source.

… Wikipedia stands for vainglorious amateurism.”