[Wikipedia-l] Median article size stablizes

[Brion VIBBER]

Karl Juhnke wrote:
> Date  Median article size in bytes
> ----  ----------------------------
> 8/30   990
> 
> By the way, I love the new stats which have been posted in
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Statistics

Just to put things in perspective, here are a few articles which are 
exactly 1000 bytes:
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coatimundi
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco

Just a few brief paragraphs, but enough to give you a general sense of 
what's being discussed.

For comparison, here are some 250 byte stubs:
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Harrison
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_magazine

some 500 byte articlettes:
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glockenspiel
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_geometry
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_le_Breton

and some nice 2000 byte articles:
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maoism
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein

About 46% of pages in the article namespace that are not redirects fall 
between the 500 to 2000 byte range. 23% are larger than that, and 21% 
fall between 250 and 500 bytes. The remaining 10% are minuscule stublets 
under 250 bytes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)