Wikipedia Theory
However, due to the size of the Wikipedia community, it may seem difficult to build connections with other users. In Clay Shirky’s article, Communities, Audiences, and Scale, he states, “the larger a group held together by communication grows, the more it must become like an audience.” The main difference between a community and an audience is how the message is delivered; in an audience, it is a one-to-many ratio, while in a community it is a many-to-many ratio. Which implies that audiences are much larger than communities. Especially in a realm as big as Wikipedia, the idea of a one-to-many audience system seems like the best solution to address users. Yet, Wikipedia tackles this by introducing the talk page and sandbox functions. These functions help develop smaller communities within the larger audience by letting other users communicate through these modems. These functions help lessen the divide between users and creates a more direct way for connections to form; if the user chooses to do so.