The story is incorrect. Knuth's comment was not removed because it was uncited. It was removed because Wikipedia has a policy that articles should not mention Wikipedia unless there's a good reason for them to.
There was a time years ago when every time some public figure mentioned Wikipedia, that fact itself would make it into their Wikipedia article. That was lame. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia about Wikipedia.
When User:Staecker removed Knuth's comment, it was with the edit summary "rm self-reference" which is shorthand for "removed unneeded reference to Wikipedia", and has nothing to do with the quote being uncited.
And, it was uncited. If Knuth wants to have a documented opinion on WP in the WP, he should write a page on his own site and cite it. WP isn't a primary source.
How on earth can an outsider know that?
So, skipping some steps, that leads us to a conclusion that the Wikipedia's grows has stopped by design. Namely, because the administration prefers to have some kind of "Better Britannica" ("better" means "bigger" in this case) and anything beyond the borders of that vision is unwelcomed.
Sorry for the emotional response. I agree.
But more or less that confirms a point: contributing to Wikipedia became a complex business; thus, the growth predictably stopped.
While none of the comments or OA itself come out and say it, there seems to be an implicit assumption that this is bad. However when I go to wikipedia there is an article about anything I want to look up. It seems like the low-hanging fruit is gone, so shouldn't we expect that it would slow down? Once there is a critical mass of editors it makes sense to slow it down and keep the bar high for contributions. It's far from perfect, but isn't it better than "grow grow grow"?
Agreed, more editing does not eaqual more quality, or vice versa. This leveling off (or even contraction) may be a normal stage in the maturity of Wikipedia.
A bigger problem, I think, is that many articles reach a high level of quality, and then suffer a succession of edits that clutter up or otherwise reduce the quality of the article. Wikipedia needs a way to fight this article entropy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Self-references_to_av...
There was a time years ago when every time some public figure mentioned Wikipedia, that fact itself would make it into their Wikipedia article. That was lame. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia about Wikipedia.
When User:Staecker removed Knuth's comment, it was with the edit summary "rm self-reference" which is shorthand for "removed unneeded reference to Wikipedia", and has nothing to do with the quote being uncited.