This is from the conclusion of a study Wilson cites twice (although he uses two different sources of the same study) <link>

"In the beginning, elite users contributed the majority of the work in Wikipedia. However, beginning in 2004 there was a dramatic shift in the distribution of work to the common users, with a corresponding decline in the influence of the elite."

Wilson also states that 1% of users contribute 50% of edits. This may seem like a small number of people until you realize that wikipedia has 6.5 million users <link> 65,000 is a fairly substantial number of people.

Did I just completely miss the point of his article or did Wilson miss the point of the studies he cites?

There's an important distinction to make here between Wikipedia administrators -- a small, select group with special authority on the site -- and the top 1 percent of most frequent contributors, which encompasses a larger group. As Professor Chi does indeed state, the influence of administrators has declined since 2004. They are not slacking; the site at large has simply grown faster than the pool of administrators.

The bulk of edits made by the top 1 percent, on the other hand, has remained surprisingly constant since about 2003. The fifth graph in the blog post I link to in the second paragraph tells this story nicely. (Direct link below). As we see, the top 1 percent has made about half of the edits for several years. The top 5 percent has made 80 percent.

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