Information crowdsourcing turns distributed contributions into shared knowledge. The scale ranges from Wikipedia’s billions of monthly content interactions to OpenStreetMap’s roughly 4 million daily map changes, while citizen-science projects convert volunteer observations and classifications into research data.
Contents
- The scale of collaborative knowledge
- Wikipedia’s contributors and output
- Participation trends in 2024
- Citizen science and research discovery
- Crowdsourced observations in nature
- OpenStreetMap and collaborative geography
The scale of collaborative knowledge
The clearest way to understand information crowdsourcing is to compare the volume of contributions with the number of people and systems that use the resulting information. The Wikimedia Foundation’s 2023–2024 Annual Report says Wikipedia received over 15 billion views a month. The same report recorded 5.7 edits per second, or a continuous flow of volunteer changes to a public information resource.
That activity supports a large knowledge base. Wikipedia had 64 million articles in 2024, and Wikimedia projects operated in more than 300 languages, according to the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2023–2024 Annual Report. These figures describe both scale and reach: contributions are made within many language communities, and the resulting information is accessed across a global audience.
Later Wikimedia reporting gives another snapshot of the system. The Wikimedia Foundation’s 2024–2025 Annual Report reported 324 edits to Wikipedia every minute, 250,000 volunteer editors worldwide, 185 affiliates, and more than 66 million Wikipedia articles. The two annual reports use different reporting periods, so the article counts and edit rates should be read as period-specific measures rather than as one precisely comparable time series.
The broader crowdsourcing landscape includes projects with different contribution types. Some volunteers write or revise text; others classify images, submit observations, trace geographic features, or validate records. This variety matters because information crowdsourcing is not limited to one platform model. It includes editorial collaboration, structured data collection, scientific classification, and map production.
Wikipedia’s contributors and output
Wikipedia illustrates how small individual actions can become a continuously maintained information system. The Wikimedia Foundation’s 2023–2024 Annual Report measured 5.7 edits per second and more than 15 billion monthly views. Those measures pair production with use: one describes the pace of changes, while the other describes the scale of access.
The 2024–2025 Annual Report reported 250,000 volunteer editors worldwide and more than 66 million articles. It also counted 185 Wikimedia affiliates. Affiliates add an organizational layer to volunteer collaboration, connecting local or thematic communities with the wider movement.
Language coverage is another measurable dimension. Wikimedia’s 2023–2024 Annual Report said Wikimedia projects operated in more than 300 languages. The 2024–2025 report highlighted Dagbani Wikipedia with more than 12,000 articles. The same report stated that Dagbani is spoken by about 3 million native speakers. Together, these figures show how a crowdsourced encyclopedia can support information production in a language community whose content volume is much smaller than the largest Wikipedias.
The 2024–2025 report also highlighted an individual contributor: a grandfather with over 250,000 edits since 2005. That is a cumulative example rather than a typical participation level, but it demonstrates how long-term contributions can become a substantial part of a shared information resource. The report further said an edit-a-thon improved almost 100 Wikipedia articles about pioneering women in cybernetics, showing how organized short-term events can target gaps in subject coverage.
| Measure | Reported figure | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia views | Over 15 billion per month | Wikimedia Foundation 2023–2024 Annual Report |
| Wikipedia articles | 64 million in 2024 | Wikimedia Foundation 2023–2024 Annual Report |
| Volunteer editors | 250,000 worldwide | Wikimedia Foundation 2024–2025 Annual Report |
| Wikimedia affiliates | 185 | Wikimedia Foundation 2024–2025 Annual Report |
| Wikipedia articles | More than 66 million | Wikimedia Foundation 2024–2025 Annual Report |
The table combines measures from two annual reports, so it is a compact reference rather than a like-for-like annual growth calculation. The source labels and reporting periods remain important when interpreting the numbers.
Participation trends in 2024
Monthly Wikimedia Movement Metrics show that information crowdsourcing can expand in reach while participation changes unevenly. In March 2024, content interactions reached 22.4 billion, up 6% year over year. User pageviews increased 1.4%, and unique devices were just beyond 1.7 billion, up 2.5% year over year. At the same time, active editors were about 90,000, down 3.3% year over year.
The March 2024 metrics also reported that returning editors fell 0.3% year over year and new editors fell about 15.9%. These figures distinguish established participation from new participation. A platform may still serve more interactions even when the flow of new contributors is weakening.
Editorial coverage measures provide a second view of participation. In March 2024, underrepresented regions supplied 31.7% of new quality articles about geographic content. New quality biographies about women and gender-diverse people reached 32.5%. These are shares of specific article groups, not shares of all Wikimedia content.
May 2024 showed a different monthly pattern. Content interactions were 19.8 billion, down 5% year over year. Unique devices were slightly higher year over year overall, with increases in North America and ESEAP, while they were flat in Latin America and dropped in Sub-Saharan Africa. Active editors were down about 3% year over year, returning active editors were largely stable, and new active editors continued to decline. The May report said new registrations also declined and likely caused the drop in new active editors.
Regional editor results were not uniform in May. Active editors increased in Sub-Saharan Africa, while they dropped in South Asia, CEECA, ESEAP, and North America. Net new content growth decreased on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Commons. Underrepresented regions accounted for 34% of new quality articles about places, and new quality biographies about women and gender-diverse people were 28%.
June 2024 continued to show movement in both directions. Content interactions were 17.6 billion, down 10.2% year over year. Unique devices were 1.66 billion, up 8.8% year over year, while active editors were 85,000, down about 3% year over year. Returning active editors were largely stable and new active editors continued to decline. Active editors increased in Sub-Saharan Africa, while they continued to decrease significantly in ESEAP.
The June metrics reported that net new content growth increased on Wikipedia but declined on Commons and Wikidata. Underrepresented regions accounted for 42.6% of new quality articles about places, and new quality biographies about women and gender-diverse people were 26%. The March, May, and June measures should be treated as monthly snapshots with their own year-over-year comparisons, not as a single smoothed trend.
Citizen science and research discovery
NASA Citizen Science demonstrates a different form of information crowdsourcing: volunteers help inspect, classify, and discover scientific evidence. NASA Citizen Science listed 36 open projects for everyone. A NASA Citizen Science resource, “A Solar Neighborhood Census, Thanks to NASA Citizen Science,” said more than 40 projects are associated with NASA. The counts use different descriptions of project availability and association, so they should not be combined into one total.
Volunteer work can also be connected to formal research. NASA Citizen Science Highlights reported that more than 650 volunteers have co-authored peer-reviewed research papers. This figure identifies a pathway from public participation to scholarly authorship, rather than simply counting observations or clicks.
The same NASA highlights reported that volunteers in Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 made over 3,000 new brown dwarf discoveries in 10 years. NASA said those discoveries essentially doubled the number of known brown dwarfs. The 10-year period is part of the measurement, and the result concerns a specific project and discovery category rather than all NASA citizen science.
Hubble-related projects show how archival information can be crowdsourced. NASA Hubble & Citizen Science reported that Hubble had amassed more than 1.7 million observations since April 1990. Hubble citizen-science projects ask volunteers to classify features in archival images and identify asteroids and galaxy objects. The observations are produced by the telescope, while the volunteer contribution is the human classification and identification work applied to the archive.
These examples show why contribution quality and task design matter. A short classification task can be repeated across a large image archive, while a discovery project may depend on volunteers noticing patterns that warrant scientific follow-up. In both cases, the information output is shaped by the interaction between a public dataset, a defined task, and many participants.
Crowdsourced observations in nature
eBird applies crowdsourcing to repeated observations of the natural world. “eBird: Crowdsourcing Bird Data” says volunteers can submit bird observations anywhere in the world at any time, and that eBird has recorded millions of observations each month. The geographic and temporal openness of the submissions allows the project to collect information outside a fixed research site or short survey window.
A study titled “Big Data approach to data quality in a citizen science project” reported more than 250,000 eBird participants, more than 17 million checklists, and 260 million bird observations. It also reported that eBird recorded 97% of the world’s known bird species. These measures describe participation, submitted survey units, total observations, and species coverage separately.
The North American Bird Phenology Program provides another example of a structured volunteer record system. The North American Bird Phenology Program reported well over 400,000 validated and released records. The word “validated” is significant: the figure refers to records that passed the program’s validation and release process, not simply every raw submission.
Together, these projects show several ways to measure crowdsourced information. A project may report people, checklists, observations, species, or validated records. Those measures answer different questions. Participants indicate the size of the contributor community; observations indicate volume; species coverage indicates breadth; and validation indicates how much of the record set has passed a quality-control step.
OpenStreetMap and collaborative geography
OpenStreetMap measures crowdsourcing through registered users, contributors, map elements, and daily changes. OpenStreetMap Stats reported more than 10 million registered users. It also reported approximately 4 million map changes per day and about 2.25 million different user contributors.
The same OpenStreetMap Stats source reported 10 billion nodes as of 2025-08-12. The date is explicit because the node total is a point-in-time measure. A node is part of the map’s structured geographic data, while a map change is an activity measure; the two figures should not be treated as equivalent units.
| OpenStreetMap measure | Reported figure | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|
| Registered users | More than 10 million | OpenStreetMap Stats, period not specified in the supplied report |
| Map nodes | 10 billion | As of 2025-08-12 |
| Map changes | Approximately 4 million per day | OpenStreetMap Stats, daily rate |
| Different user contributors | About 2.25 million | OpenStreetMap Stats, period not specified in the supplied report |
The relationship between registered users and different contributors illustrates why platform totals need careful reading. Registration is a broad account measure, while different user contributors describes people who have contributed to the map. The reported figures therefore distinguish potential reach from observed map-making participation.
Across Wikipedia, NASA projects, eBird, the North American Bird Phenology Program, and OpenStreetMap, information crowdsourcing appears in several measurable forms: edits, articles, interactions, classifications, discoveries, observations, validated records, nodes, and map changes. The most useful statistic depends on the information task being measured and on the period and geography attached to the source.