[Foundation-l] Tragical dynamics: that run for the number of articles

[Ziko van Dijk]

Maybe this is not the most popular item, but I do like to comment on
the news about Japanese and Polish Wikipedias and their 500,000
articles each. In fact, jp.WP actually has 500,000, but pl.WP does
not.
In an attempt to compare Wikipedia language editions I have clicked
the button "random articles" and with a sample of 50 clicks each I
have calculated how many articles a language edition really has, minus
all those pseudo articles.

A pseudo article is e.g.
http://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini
http://co.wikipedia.org/wiki/191
http://ksh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsseveld
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandil
http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poplar_Bluff

Many Wikipedias loose, in my calculation, quite a huge percentage of
their articles. There is one honourable exception: Japanese Wikipedia,
which in 50 clicks showed absolutely no pseudo article. If Japanese
Wikipedia would have such a floppy policy about new articles as many
others have, jp.WP were already close to one million "articles". Pl.WP
has for about 300,000 real articles, very respectable, but not what it
seems to be.

Since the beginnings, Wikipedians report about the number of articles,
having to tell something about to the media and to be proud about
their achievements. They rank Wikipedia language editions by the
number of articles. This has caused tragical dynamics: many
Wikipedians and Wikipedias are so obsessed with this number that they
produce rubbish articles to show off. Volapük Wikipedia with more than
100,000 pseudo articles created by a single bot using user is only the
top of the iceberg, and when someone called to close vo.WP, vo.WP was
supported by a amazing number of users from many language editions:
cosi fan tutte. Wikipedians could and should use their time for more
useful article work.

It would be good if the community found a different way to compare or
to measure it's successes.

Ziko





-- 
Ziko van Dijk
NL-Silvolde