Verifying claims about ENWP project size

List overview All Threads
Download

newer

older

[job opening] Software Engineer -...

Fwd: [GLAM] New Free Research...

Pine W

16 Sep 2015 16 Sep '15

7:45 a.m.

Hi researchers, I could use a little help with understanding these dumps: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwikisource/latest/ https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20150901/ I'm trying to verify the claim that ENWP is the world's largest open text project, and to do that I need to verify that ENWP is larger than English Wikisource. Which files should I be comparing? Are there any other projects that could make a claim to be a larger open text project than ENWP? Perhaps there's a library somewhere that has such a huge volume of out-of-copyright materials that the combined bytes of published text are larger than ENWP? Thanks! Pine

Attachments:

attachment.htm (text/html — 1.4 KB)

Show replies by date

Jonathan Morgan

16 Sep 16 Sep

8:24 a.m.

Hi Pine, TL;DR: best to just say it's the largest encyclopedia ever. That should be safe. Claims like this are hard to make because terms that seem concrete from afar tend to break down up close. For example: What do you mean by largest? Largest in bytes? Words? Content "units" (articles vs. manuscripts in this case, I guess)? Contributors? What do you mean by "open text project"? Is archive.org an open text project? It has 8.2 million books. How would you compare the two? Does 1 book = 1 article? Having said all that, I'm curious how others have/would craft a claim like this. My guess is that most of us who've written for an academic audience have settled for some variant of "largest encyclopedia" (you've got to put something in your Introduction paragraph, after all). What sayst? J On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 4:45 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

-- Jonathan T. Morgan Senior Design Researcher Wikimedia Foundation User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>

WereSpielChequers

3:21 p.m.

...

On 16 Sep 2015, at 01:24, Jonathan Morgan <jmorgan(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Hi Pine, TL;DR: best to just say it's the largest encyclopedia ever. That should be safe. Claims like this are hard to make because terms that seem concrete from afar tend to break down up close. For example: What do you mean by largest? Largest in bytes? Words? Content "units" (articles vs. manuscripts in this case, I guess)? Contributors? What do you mean by "open text project"? Is archive.org an open text project? It has 8.2 million books. How would you compare the two? Does 1 book = 1 article? Having said all that, I'm curious how others have/would craft a claim like this. My guess is that most of us who've written for an academic audience have settled for some variant of "largest encyclopedia" (you've got to put something in your Introduction paragraph, after all). What sayst? J

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 4:45 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hi researchers, I could use a little help with understanding these dumps: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwikisource/latest/ https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20150901/ I'm trying to verify the claim that ENWP is the world's largest open text project, and to do that I need to verify that ENWP is larger than English Wikisource. Which files should I be comparing? Are there any other projects that could make a claim to be a larger open text project than ENWP? Perhaps there's a library somewhere that has such a huge volume of out-of-copyright materials that the combined bytes of published text are larger than ENWP? Thanks! Pine _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Pine W

17 Sep 17 Sep

3:32 a.m.

I was thinking in terms of GB of text. I too have wondered about creating closer ties between Wiktionary, Wikipedia and Wikisource so that it's easier for someone to start their search on one site and quickly find relevant pages on the other sites. This might (among other things) lead to an increase in pageviews. (Adding Toby to this email chain to see if he has any thoughts about that.) It would also conceivably lead to an increase in the "size" of Wikipedia (measured in bytes, content pages, and contributors) if Wiktionary and Wikisource were, for purposes of the reader, practically the same site. The downside might be increased complexity for contributors as the number of workflows increases, and the standards for inclusion may be different. Pine On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 12:21 AM, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

I'm pretty sure that English Wikipedia is the largest English language encyclopaedia, but there are some humongous ones in China. Baidu Baike with almost 12.5 million articles is way bigger than any one language version of Wikipedia and Baike.com formerly Hudong is about a million bigger still. Ok they are more inclusionist than us, recipes included, and they have somewhat dropped the distinction between a dictionary and an encyclopaedia. So you can claim that Wikipedia with near 35 million articles in 288 languages is the largest encyclopaedia ever. Adding wiktionary would make that even bigger. Source Wikipedia - I'm afraid I don't speak Chinese to check them myself. Of course articles is a flawed metric, combining almost all the individual Pokemon articles into a handful of lists reduced the number of Wikipedia articles by hundreds, but still left us with more information on Pokemon than I would want to see in a printed encyclopaedia. But then can anyone suggest a meaningful metric for comparing such projects; Participants? Contributed edits? Shelf space if printed in traditional encyclopaedia sized books? Gigabytes of text? Trays of microfiche? Regards Jonathan On 16 Sep 2015, at 01:24, Jonathan Morgan <jmorgan(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Hi Pine, TL;DR: best to just say it's the largest encyclopedia ever. That should be safe. Claims like this are hard to make because terms that seem concrete from afar tend to break down up close. For example: What do you mean by largest? Largest in bytes? Words? Content "units" (articles vs. manuscripts in this case, I guess)? Contributors? What do you mean by "open text project"? Is archive.org an open text project? It has 8.2 million books. How would you compare the two? Does 1 book = 1 article? Having said all that, I'm curious how others have/would craft a claim like this. My guess is that most of us who've written for an academic audience have settled for some variant of "largest encyclopedia" (you've got to put something in your Introduction paragraph, after all). What sayst? J On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 4:45 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:

-- Jonathan T. Morgan Senior Design Researcher Wikimedia Foundation User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)> _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Oliver Keyes

4:03 a.m.

Search is a Discovery team focus, rather than a Readership focus. I'd suggest reaching out to Dan Garry (we have been talking about project integration very recently, actually). On 16 September 2015 at 15:32, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

-- Jonathan T. Morgan Senior Design Researcher Wikimedia Foundation User:Jmorgan (WMF) _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

-- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation

Pine W

8:13 a.m.

Oh, ok! Now pinging Discovery Dan. (: On Sep 16, 2015 1:04 PM, "Oliver Keyes" <okeyes(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

I was thinking in terms of GB of text. I too have wondered about creating closer ties between Wiktionary,

Wikipedia

and Wikisource so that it's easier for someone to start their search on

one

site and quickly find relevant pages on the other sites. This might

(among

other things) lead to an increase in pageviews. (Adding Toby to this

chain to see if he has any thoughts about that.) It would also

conceivably

lead to an increase in the "size" of Wikipedia (measured in bytes,

content

pages, and contributors) if Wiktionary and Wikisource were, for purposes

the reader, practically the same site. The downside might be increased complexity for contributors as the number of workflows increases, and the standards for inclusion may be different. Pine On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 12:21 AM, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm pretty sure that English Wikipedia is the largest English language > encyclopaedia, but there are some humongous ones in China. > > Baidu Baike with almost 12.5 million articles is way bigger than any one > language version of Wikipedia and Baike.com formerly Hudong is about a > million bigger still. > > Ok they are more inclusionist than us, recipes included, and they have > somewhat dropped the distinction between a dictionary and an

encyclopaedia.

> > So you can claim that Wikipedia with near 35 million articles in 288 > languages is the largest encyclopaedia ever. Adding wiktionary would

make

> that even bigger. > > Source Wikipedia - I'm afraid I don't speak Chinese to check them

myself.

> > Of course articles is a flawed metric, combining almost all the

individual

> Pokemon articles into a handful of lists reduced the number of Wikipedia > articles by hundreds, but still left us with more information on Pokemon > than I would want to see in a printed encyclopaedia. But then can anyone > suggest a meaningful metric for comparing such projects; Participants? > Contributed edits? Shelf space if printed in traditional encyclopaedia

sized

> books? Gigabytes of text? Trays of microfiche? > > Regards > > Jonathan > > > On 16 Sep 2015, at 01:24, Jonathan Morgan <jmorgan(a)wikimedia.org>

wrote:

> > Hi Pine, > > TL;DR: best to just say it's the largest encyclopedia ever. That should

> safe. > > Claims like this are hard to make because terms that seem concrete from > afar tend to break down up close. For example: What do you mean by

largest?

> > Largest in bytes? Words? Content "units" (articles vs. manuscripts in

this

> case, I guess)? Contributors? > > What do you mean by "open text project"? Is archive.org an open text > project? It has 8.2 million books. How would you compare the two? Does 1 > book = 1 article? > > Having said all that, I'm curious how others have/would craft a claim

> this. My guess is that most of us who've written for an academic

audience

> have settled for some variant of "largest encyclopedia" (you've got to

put

> something in your Introduction paragraph, after all). What sayst? > > J > > On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 4:45 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Hi researchers, >> >> I could use a little help with understanding these dumps: >> >> https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwikisource/latest/ >> >> https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20150901/ >> >> I'm trying to verify the claim that ENWP is the world's largest open

text

>> project, and to do that I need to verify that ENWP is larger than

English

>> Wikisource. Which files should I be comparing? >> >> Are there any other projects that could make a claim to be a larger

open

>> text project than ENWP? Perhaps there's a library somewhere that has

such a

huge volume of out-of-copyright materials that the combined bytes of published text are larger than ENWP? Thanks! Pine _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

-- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Lydia Pintscher

19 Sep 19 Sep

9:56 p.m.

On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 2:13 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Oh, ok! Now pinging Discovery Dan. (:

On that topic please see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T103102 as well. Cheers Lydia -- Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher Product Manager for Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 10963 Berlin www.wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.

2815

days inactive

2819

days old

wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Manage subscription

6 comments

5 participants

tags (0)

participants (5)

Jonathan Morgan
Lydia Pintscher
Oliver Keyes
Pine W
WereSpielChequers