Here are some charts showing the slow growth of the Papiamentu version of Wikipedia. After four and a half years of operation, the project has only attracted 35 people who made more than 10 edits per person. It currently has fewer than 900 articles and half of them are useless "stubs."
The articles that actually have some content and have been edited by multiple people can be a good source of non-fiction reading material.
I have often wondered why the Papiamentu Wikipedia is so small compared to (for example) the Esperanto Wikipedia. Papiamentu speakers are all fluent in languages other than Papiamentu, so they can get their information and edit-war fun from the Spanish, Dutch or English versions of the 'pedia. But a similar situation applies to Esperanto; there are no monolingual Esperanto speakers.
The difference must be psychological, I suppose. Choosing to know Esperanto is different from growing up by happenstance in an area where Papiamentu is spoken. I suppose the intentionalness of Esperanto has something to do with motivating many of its speakers to participate in public spectacles like Wikipedia.
Any other theories? Feel free to comment.
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