2008/6/3 Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
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2008/6/3 David Goodman :
Quote from it worth some attention
We update the database at the rate of about 30-35 percent per year. A third of the database is completely revised on a yearly basis thanks to the input of our contributors. That's something that is probably much more speedy than Wikipedia. Obviously Wikipedia cannot do that because they are several times as large as we are
What an odd thing to claim. Wikipedia must have many hundreds the number of contributors that Britannica has. Most of the articles I come across have been edited in the last 6 months. I'm not sure how "update the database" is defined here, but if we take it to mean an article being edited, the majority of Wikipedia's database must be updated every year. I would guess that over 75% of Wikipedia articles have been edited in the last year. Are there any statistics on this?
It would depend heavily on what you count as an edit. Most articles people will look at are edited fairly regularly but once you move to the less visited articles edits tend to be either bot or highly automated AWB stuff. Yes there are many articles where a year can go by without a significant edit. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMY_Mary may appear to have a fair number of edits but it hasn't had much in the way of significant edits since july last year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattewater_Wreck no content changes since nov 2006. This isn't always a problem. In the case of those two ships there is little need for updateing unless something significant happens to the wreck.