On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 5:26 AM, Carcharothcarcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
There are long-term stats somewhere, and they could be updated if you asked. I suggest identifying which of the featured areas you want to see long-term stats for, and asking at the relevant talk pages. An approximation to these stats could be obtained by going through the Signpost summaries.
If you don't need week-by-week stats, then the best place is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics
The total number of featured articles has been rising fairly steadily, but the ratio of featured articles to total articles (a little under 0.1%) has remained more or less steady over the years.
In contrast, the percentage of articles that are Good Articles has been rising for some time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_statistics
I think the main reason why this week stands out is the unusually low number of FA promotions; sometimes the process hits a lull, and sometimes a bunch of pending promotions don't get processed until after the Signpost reports its numbers, which can make the week-to-week numbers a fun tea leaf reading exercise but they don't necessarily mean much.
-Sage (User:Ragesoss)