Wiki too tricky?
Wikipedia's founder has admitted that the encyclopaedia site ‘that anyone can edit' is too complex for many people to modify.
The world's fifth most popular site, which is almost 10 years old, needs a new generation of contributors and preferably more women editors, Jimmy Wales told the BBC.
The site wants to boost its user base from 400m to 1bn by 2015 but in order to achieve such growth the site will need a new interface as Wales reportedly believes the existing one leaves may people ‘afraid' to contribute to the site as code known as Wiki mark-up is sometimes required to format articles.
"We have to support our old power users because they build the site. But we also need to have a ramp for new users," he told Auntie.
"If you click edit and you see some Wiki syntax and some bizarre table structure - a lot of people are literally afraid. They're good people and they don't want to break something," he reportedly added.
Wikipedia is apparently working on an ‘adopt a user' initiative where seasoned Wiki contributors can take newbie's under their wing as well as designing simple editing tools.
However, Wales was apparently adamant that Wikipedia's financial model will not change as the site is currently funded by donations from its users.
"We have just finished our fundraiser for the year - we raised $16m (£10m) faster than we have ever done it before," he reportedly said.
While the donation model lends stability to the site, Wales apparently admitted it also constrains what it can do.
"We don't have a lot of money - we are running a website with 408m visitors on just over $20m. I think we're the most efficient charity there is by a long shot in terms of the number of people we impact for a small amount of money," he reportedly said.
