Oh I agree that the connections are tenuous and this was just a thought to get the ball rolling. That being said, I ought to clarify.

I am not saying Wikipedia was a ‘college website,’ rather at the time I would argue that HS/College-associated individuals made up the majority of people who would visit Wikipedia.

Likewise, I am not saying that FB expanding to the general public introduced the general public to Wikipedia; rather, the expansion of FB to the general public was more organic in that not everyone picked it up right away (the early adopters more closely resembled the initial user base of near-college aged individuals). This is where FB would serve as a nexus between ‘groups,’ not individuals. Thus, FB facilitated the growth of Wikipedia at this time, particularly among students.

My words are not perfect, but an example may do better:

Students at College ‘A’ use Wikipedia for research. Students at College ‘B’ do not know about Wikipedia. Through FB, a student at College ‘B’ learns of Wikipedia from an old friend at College ‘A.’ The student at College ‘B’ then tells his friends about Wikipedia, and eventually most Students at College ‘B’ know of Wikipedia.

People go a bit crazy on March break, eh?

You have provided no supporting links or evidence for any of the claims you have made. So I am going to continue to trust Pew over some random guy on the internet’s opinions.

Apparently so. Someone corrected me on a separate comment but I didn't think to self-correct or amend my comment. Thanks for calling out my inaccuracy.

The parts of this chain that connect FB and wikipedia do not ring true to me at all. I absolutely do not think that Wikipedia was a college site and then when FB expanded to the general public, the general public found out about Wikipedia by being connected to college students. No part of that seems true or reasonable to me.

In short: FB created a network exclusively for college students -> Initial Wikipedia users were likely college/university students -> FB then expanded to public users (mostly other teens/young adults) -> The knowledge of Wikipedia spread through FB networks -> The rapid growth of FB therefore contributed to the rapid growth/popularity of Wikipedia at that time

The connection to ‘edits’ is implicit; In general, the more people are aware of Wikipedia the more contributions/edits, all else equal. The timing of the outliers in question appear to coincide with the US academic calendar, whereby term and final papers are generally due at the end of the academic year (spring semester). Students, needing citations for information/sources included in their papers, may have been more likely to edit/amend Wikipedia pages than other Wikipedia users at that time.

Pretty sure this was an assignment in my computer class in junior high

It's too bad they shut Wikipedia down at the end of 2010, or we could have had the last 12 years of numbers as well.

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nah, its pretty reliable.

that it is a great summary and aggregator of information and its easy to follow the citations to reputable sources for verification and further detail/context.

Heres the link the the exact data used in this chart—wikipedia english edits: https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/contributing/edits/normal%7Cbar%7Call%7C~total%7Cmonthly

If you earn $40k per year you pay very little under an IDR plan like REPAYE, which is 10% of discretionary income (income above 150% of FPGL).

Wikipedia is full of shit

If you wanted more shades of difference at one end and fewer at the other, sure. Which end do you want squish and which end do you want to expand?

I don't understand the connection you're proposing. What's the link between the two websites

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How is giving a trillion dollars different from not receiving a trillion dollars? /gen

To be clear, it's not spending money. It's just deciding not to collect it. That's very different.

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It is just an assumption of mine. It was worldwide, and left a lot of people out of work with time on their hands.

Content grows with activity. Early on both grew rapidly, now content keeps growing but activity has declined a bit.

What do you guys say when people tell you Wikipedia is full of shit?

I seemingly cannot even bring it up to some people I happen to know.

And to them I am an idiot for raising it. Lol. Thanks!!