She notes that as the screens used to read news or social media have become smaller, the screens of the so-called creative class have gotten bigger — often two screens together — for writing or designing or coding. The smaller screens of smartphones and tablets do not lend themselves to research and taking notes, or writing long encyclopedia entries.

Ian Bogost, professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, points to the still-ubiquitous signature — “Sent from my phone, sorry for typos” — as an indication that smartphones are inferior writing tools.

“Careful, long-form writing and editing on mobile is difficult at best, impossible at worst,” Mr. Bogost wrote in a message composed on his laptop from Geneva. “Think about Angry Birds: part of the reason it’s so popular is because it can be played by pulling a slingshot.”

Wikipedia relies on a diligent army of roughly 75,000 volunteers each month who edit the articles for a staggeringly large readership. With 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors a month, according to the ratings firm comScore, Wikipedia trails just Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and Google, the largest with 1.2 billion unique visitors.

But despite its popularity, there is worry in the Wikipedia community and among people who track it that the pipeline of editors could dry up if new mobile users do not realize that they can edit the articles, or have difficulty doing so. Who will change the Seattle Seahawks’ entry to note their first Super Bowl victory? Who will update the CVS article to record the pharmacy chain’s decision to stop selling tobacco products at its stores?

The Wikipedia page on the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died this month from what appeared to be a drug overdose, highlights the lack of editing on mobile devices. Since Mr. Hoffman’s death, his entry has had more than four million page views. Of the more than 200 editors who updated its content and made hundreds of changes, only two changes were tagged as coming from a mobile phone or tablet, according to Wikipedia data.