umn.edu [PDF] · #thehumancondition
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The punchline: As of 2013, this article's publication, there were
- 41,018,804 total labor-hours expended in the English-language version of Wikipedia. [. . .] Extrapolating to all language versions of Wikipedia based on the total number of edits made to each project, we estimate that 61,706,883 total labor-hours have been contributed in edit sessions for non-English language Wikipedias, for a total of 102,673,683 total labor-hours to all Wikipedia versions.
By comparison, the paper cites a 2010 book that claims Americans watch 200 billion hours annually on watching television. Maybe later I'll try finding some statistics on the amount of time spent watching YouTube, or less sympathetically, watching Twitch or playing League of Legends (I know I racked something like 2000 hours).
No one gets paid to edit Wikipedia, so I'm tempted to compare the different leisure activities and rue humanity's sloth. But I've edited wikipedia maybe three times.