Can the dabblers become the players?--Notes 1 in the Wikimania 2007

I went to the Wikimania 2007 and attended the session 105 yesterday. The first speech in this session is "Where have all the writers gone: the diversion, distraction and departure of Wiki "Content Creators"", by Seth Anthony.

Mr. Anthony gave some statistical analyses about the demography of the wiki's content creators and their behaviours. Most of his points were explained clearly in the slides he prepared. I am particularly interested, intrigued, or inspired in few points below:

1. Outsider provides content, insiders edit;

2. Not all edits are created equall;

3. "Who cares who writes wikipedia?" - blog comment;

4. Were they once "Wikipedians" who changed their focus to administrative tasks?

5. Editors (and admins) are not homogenous. 50% of content edits come from outside the “community

This speech sort of explains why the reliability of the Wikipedia sometimes being doubted. Since some of the content creators are so-called "dabblers", it seems difficult to maintain the quality of the knowledge in the Wiki.

However, I think the maturity of the Wikipedia now is far above it was started. While more edits participating in the "knowldege-becoming process", the consistency of the quality of those "wiki-knowledge" might be assured. The problem will be laid on how fast the wiki-participants find the errors, rather than how many errors they find and correct.