World of Warcraft's Wikipedia Entry Way Smaller Than Second Life's-- Why?

Randomly browsing Wikipedia recently, a thought occurred to me, so on a whim, I did a word count on two of its popular entries:

• Word count for World of Warcraft's Wikipedia listing: 6,898 words
• Word count for Second Life's Wikipedia listing: 10,155 words

I find this kind of fascinating, somehow. How do you suppose an online world with some 12 million players generated an entry smaller than one with maybe a million users at most?

Comments

[Jovin]

How about....

WoW - users too busy playing it to write about it.
SL - users too busy writing about it to spend time in it

Only (half) joking - but SL does seem to have a lot of Residents who blog endlessly about it but "don't spend that much time inworld anymore".

[Mario]

WoW is content itself whereas SL is a medium. So while people get entrenched in WoW for what it is, SL people talks/writes alot about its *potential* use and forget that while talking/writing they're are not actually creating anything to make any difference inworld.

[Adric Antfarm]

Jovin is correct. Half (okay 2/3) of the SL bloggers are more about banner ads or pushing their lame xstreet/in-world items then ever logging on. Speaking of which, go to my blog.

However, to the larger point. SL is people (unless you have a tail or ears like a bunny I guess) like vet support groups, schools- as opposed to mordidly obeses guys living in mom's basement pretending to a be a level 69 mage dwarf with an invisability cloak. These people can't blog or wiki. For the love of FSM most of them can't see their own genitelia.

So - if WOW sold more crap - there would be more blogs and more wiki. Also, how much space do you need to explain that concept. "You pretend to be something more important than you will ever be and do things more important than you will ever do" AS OPPOSED TO "you sell people land and items that do not exist unless you are into the cos/age play thing in which case you.....

[Maggie Darwin]

Gee Mario...did you know that of you think about and discuss building before you actually build something, you have a better chance of producing quality content than if you just start slamming out prims?

(Pointy-haired-boss: "Thinking!? I don't pay you to think! How can you be programming? You're not actually typing!")

Believe it or not, "all that talking/writing" does "make a difference inworld".

[melponeme_k]

The fandom in WoW is large and they do have loads of info networks just not in blogs.

The WoW community networks are mainly in podcasts and machinima. The WoW machinima puts everything done in other worlds to shame. This is the newest one to top in the community.
http://vimeo.com/2625538

The few blogs I've seen on WoW cover a lot of other worlds as well.

[Adric Antfarm]

Good Lord Mags....

How did I let you attack Mario without me? Always check your six for your squad before heading out into fire.

Do you not read this page Mario and see some of the amazing creations in SL? Entire sims of concept and design I wish I was capable of. This blog loves to show eye candy for some reason, but still it shows some things I would never find in-world without it.

Now, WOW - let's see. Oh yeah. Violence. Some substance there.

[Adric Antfarm]

Another point is passion (or the Colbert Effect).

Look at Colbert's numbers. Not that far from what "Degrassi:TNG" pulls. However, his band of merry twits do what it takes to spread his name all over and now even into space.

See also (Howard Stern Effect). People love to listen and will call CNN and blurt out dumb things for you UNTIL you start to charge for your product on pay radio taking the company down with you since they overpaid thinking your fans would suddenly pay.

It's not that SL is more popular, it's that we just really like to talk about it because something went very wrong in our RL lives. Very wrong I imagine.

[Burgundy Mirajkar]

This one's easy. It's that WoW is a game, while SL is a world. According to their own wiki pages, 240 million people play soccer/football worldwide, but only around one million live in San Jose, CA. I didn't do a word count, but the San Jose page dwarfs the soccer page. There might be more people playing soccer -- and I suspect at least 12 million of them are internet literate -- but there's just less to say than there is to say about an environment that serves a far broader range of purposes to the people within it.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I've played WOW and Second Life, enjoyed them both, and any generalization made about the user base of either world is likely to be wrong.

WOW is cohesive in theme and design and thus easier to encapsulate in a concise article. The Second Life virtual world model is not as familiar or widespread as the commercial MMO model and requires more explanation for a general audience.

I don't think there's anything more to be read into it than that.

[Doubledown Tandino]

I agree with Arcadia. WoW is a world in a bubble encapsulated by the creators (Blizzard).

To get a more in depth look at WoW anyone can read a player's manual for the plethora of info.

What more could be said about World of Warcraft on wikipedia? only tips and tricks and more about specific gameplay.

Whereas Second Life, a non-game about life, is going to take up more explanation space. Just in terms of avatar/player abilities, SL needs a long description about each aspect (building, snapshots, inventory, designing clothes, etc)

[Hamlet Au]

Well, I wonder. There's all the official WoW narrative, then there's also the huge layer of user-generated content of guilds, blogs, fan fiction, etc. etc. Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, so why aren't WoW fans jumping all over the game's page to add their favorite stuff?

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Wikipedia culture may play a role as well. Some sections and articles get frequent excisions of material not deemed "notable", while others get overlooked.

There is a definite editorial hierarchy, in which, to quote Orwell, some Animals are more equal than others. If a clique of established editors take exception to a particular game, they can thwart any attempts to expand its coverage -- or in at least one notorious case, eliminate it altogether.

I haven't looked over the edit history, so this is idle speculation. I do know that articles on notable SL denizens in Wikipedia have been eliminated with little debate, so maybe the dynamic isn't one-sided. But it's at least possible that this says more about Wikipedia than it says about either SL or WOW.

[Doubledown Tandino]

Another aspect as to why SL may have more of a wikipedia industry is because of business. People drivin by business goals would be more inclined to add to the wikipedia.
Whereas WoW... the people are just playing the game, and really have no incentive to add pieces to the WoW wikipedia entry.

[Harry]

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