On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 12:06 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 28 March 2010 20:42, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
Just as an example, I was taking part in the Military History World War I contest recently, and there were at least 43 new articles created (or expanded) for DYK. I'm currently trying to work out how many articles were actually created (as opposed to expanded).
It is to be expected that experienced wikipedians can find things to write about. However our new article creation has historically been for the most part driven by new users (and a handful of experienced users who managed to create very large numbers of articles) who may more legitimately be running out of things they can write articles on that won't get deleted on sight.
The presumption is that the initial article creation by "the masses" in the early year of the project is a larger number than the "filling in the gaps" by experienced Wikipedians. My hypothesis (OK, speculation) is that filling in the gaps will create a *larger* number of articles (over a longer period of time) than the initial burst of article creation.
Think of it as the initial article creation staking out a territory. And then slowly the gaps get filled in. Who is to say that the gaps are not larger than the solid parts of the structure currently being filled in?
Carcharoth