http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htmIt's obvious of the peak in January of 2007.
What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has statistically declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a slope and even less so for very active contributors.
What happened in the first six months of 2007? Did we change template systems? Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
This relates to an OTRS project I have going on and I got looking into the userbase question to prep.
~Keegan
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Keegan Paul kgnpaul@gmail.com wrote:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htmIt's obvious of the peak in January of 2007.
What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has statistically declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a slope and even less so for very active contributors.
What happened in the first six months of 2007? Did we change template systems? Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
Careful not to mistake a decline in the derivative of a function to be a decline in the function. The number of new contributors _must_ decline at some point, unless you hold a hypothesis that Wikipedia will eventually be driving the growth of human population. ;)
The step function in December 2005 is clearly due to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Wikimedia_Found...
The only thing I recall happening around June 2007 was the introduction of a real captcha. Might be relevant if a non-trivial amount of the new accounts were spambot sleepers!
I don't recall how those stats are generated. If they are produced from the public data then there will be odd distortions due to deletions hiding accounts..
I think there were also changes to the upload procedure around that time (the interface language abuse for an upload wizard) which started directing users to commons to upload... and uploading is a primary reason to create an account. This seems to be at least weakly supported by the stats on commons: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaCOMMONS.htm
I'd guess that like most things its probably a mixture of weak effects.
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:57 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.comwrote:
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Keegan Paul kgnpaul@gmail.com wrote:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htmIt's obvious of the peak in January of 2007.
What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has
statistically
declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a slope and even less so for very active contributors.
What happened in the first six months of 2007? Did we change template systems? Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
Careful not to mistake a decline in the derivative of a function to be a decline in the function. The number of new contributors _must_ decline at some point, unless you hold a hypothesis that Wikipedia will eventually be driving the growth of human population. ;)
The step function in December 2005 is clearly due to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Wikimedia_Found...
The only thing I recall happening around June 2007 was the introduction of a real captcha. Might be relevant if a non-trivial amount of the new accounts were spambot sleepers!
I don't recall how those stats are generated. If they are produced from the public data then there will be odd distortions due to deletions hiding accounts..
I think there were also changes to the upload procedure around that time (the interface language abuse for an upload wizard) which started directing users to commons to upload... and uploading is a primary reason to create an account. This seems to be at least weakly supported by the stats on commons: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaCOMMONS.htm
I'd guess that like most things its probably a mixture of weak effects.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Oh sure, figures lie and liars figure. Like stereotypes, from a broad lens, they make sense.
I think captcha probably had a good deal to do with it. Good point there to mention. The systemization of procedures is a good point as well, whether it be uploading or bot-assisted and the functionality of automated tools like huggle and twinkle.
With these thoughts in mind, the good thing is that the standard userbase numbers are consistent.
Thanks Greg, other thoughts?
~Keegan
Oh yeah, the Account Creation proccess, article upload wizard, and commons image uploading process has some effect as well. In optimizing one or a few times contributions, we perhaps also do not pique interest in further content creation. On the other hand, maybe they wouldn't have even tried before. I move to the former, based on the stats.
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 2:02 AM, Keegan Paul kgnpaul@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:57 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.comwrote:
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Keegan Paul kgnpaul@gmail.com wrote:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htmIt's obvious of
the
peak in January of 2007.
What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has
statistically
declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a slope and even less so for very active contributors.
What happened in the first six months of 2007? Did we change template systems? Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
Careful not to mistake a decline in the derivative of a function to be a decline in the function. The number of new contributors _must_ decline at some point, unless you hold a hypothesis that Wikipedia will eventually be driving the growth of human population. ;)
The step function in December 2005 is clearly due to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Wikimedia_Found...
The only thing I recall happening around June 2007 was the introduction of a real captcha. Might be relevant if a non-trivial amount of the new accounts were spambot sleepers!
I don't recall how those stats are generated. If they are produced from the public data then there will be odd distortions due to deletions hiding accounts..
I think there were also changes to the upload procedure around that time (the interface language abuse for an upload wizard) which started directing users to commons to upload... and uploading is a primary reason to create an account. This seems to be at least weakly supported by the stats on commons: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaCOMMONS.htm
I'd guess that like most things its probably a mixture of weak effects.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Oh sure, figures lie and liars figure. Like stereotypes, from a broad lens, they make sense.
I think captcha probably had a good deal to do with it. Good point there to mention. The systemization of procedures is a good point as well, whether it be uploading or bot-assisted and the functionality of automated tools like huggle and twinkle.
With these thoughts in mind, the good thing is that the standard userbase numbers are consistent.
Thanks Greg, other thoughts?
~Keegan
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
The number of new contributors _must_ decline at some point, unless you hold a hypothesis that Wikipedia will eventually be driving the growth of human population. ;)
Well, young people *are* increasingly turning to Wikipedia to learn about things:
http://stats.grok.se/en/201003/Sex
On 03/27/2010 09:49 PM, Keegan Paul wrote:
What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has statistically declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a slope and even less so for very active contributors.
What happened in the first six months of 2007? Did we change template systems? Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
I've got two hypotheses, but no data, so I don't know how true these are.
One is that this correlates with Wikipedia's hype curve. The notion is that people were most likely to become involved in Wikipedia when it was new to them. By now most people have settled in as either readers or participants, and are unlikely to change roles.
The other is that this relates to the odds that somebody would arrive on a topic and see something that to them obviously needed fixing and that they could easily fix right then. This would be a function of increasing coverage, increasing article quality, and tightened standards that might eliminate things novice editors would find appealing.
These could both be true, as could a number of other things. Like Gregory Maxwell, I suspect it's a mix of weak effects.
William
On 28/03/2010, Keegan Paul kgnpaul@gmail.com wrote:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htmIt's obvious of the peak in January of 2007.
What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has statistically declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a slope and even less so for very active contributors.
I think a lot of people get involved to write new articles. It looks like 2007 was 'peak oil' for new articles; after that it was getting harder to find new articles to write; about half of the articles that were realistically likely to be covered, were already covered. (*)
Of course a lot of the articles still weren't *very* good, and many contributors are polishing these articles up, as well as working on the remaining new articles; that's why we're seeing a slower decline on contributors than articles.
What happened in the first six months of 2007? Did we change template systems? Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
There is only a little bit of very weak evidence for something happening and no terribly obvious candidates, the only thing I can think of was that around then there was an increased push for referencing stuff. Before that you could more or less put anything in, it was easy and quick. Nothing really massively changed in terms of policies, they just enforced them more strictly. Referencing is harder and this slowed the growth a bit, but not too badly; I'm pretty sure that the peak isn't down due to just requiring references though, finding new articles to write is getting quite difficult now; this IMO is the driving reason.
This relates to an OTRS project I have going on and I got looking into the userbase question to prep.
~Keegan
* - there's been some new articles required since the Wikipedia started up in 2001; knowledge has been created! New knowledge is eventually going to set the level of continued growth of the Wikipedia, perhaps about 500 articles per day or something. If you look at the new article feed we're growing at about ~1200 articles per day, and perhaps about half of those likely to survive in the feed are now about topics that happened since the Wikipedia started and couldn't have been written in 2001. Basically, the Wikipedia has been playing catch-up on 2001 till now as well as dealing with new knowledge; but IMO it will probably be mostly dealing with new knowledge within the next year or so.
Ian Woollard wrote:
- there's been some new articles required since the Wikipedia
started up in 2001; knowledge has been created! New knowledge is eventually going to set the level of continued growth of the Wikipedia, perhaps about 500 articles per day or something. If you look at the new article feed we're growing at about ~1200 articles per day, and perhaps about half of those likely to survive in the feed are now about topics that happened since the Wikipedia started and couldn't have been written in 2001. Basically, the Wikipedia has been playing catch-up on 2001 till now as well as dealing with new knowledge; but IMO it will probably be mostly dealing with new knowledge within the next year or so.
I don't completely agree here, but I do think an analysis by various "phases" is probably helpful - more so than trying to attribute changes in the editing pattern to specific "management decisions", though these do have an impact that is not negligible.
For the future historian of enWP, I suspect, the "end of the beginning" will be a key point. This is what I'd refer to as "we get the first draft"; the point (maybe in 2008?) where it would make sense to say "so in future the coverage is going to be something like this, except more so in some places". This is an approximate sort of concept, as is the demographic idea of "saturation", where "everybody likely to want to hear of Wikipedia has by now heard of it". Somewhere, in those concepts and the content/community matchup, is a basic truth about what we have been doing in the first nine years: collating information and recruiting editors, to the point where the nature of the project (as opposed to the nature of the mission, abstractly stated) has become reasonably clear.
So in those terms, at least, the peak of sheer activity anticipates the "first draft" by a year or so. Plausible enough to me: before you get your first draft together there are "placeholder" parts where the author knows that what currrently stands there is sorely deficient, things just dashed down. Sounds familiar enough for the sort of content that has needed to be gradually eradicated. Doing that is something more like real work (the point made earlier in the thread about referencing).
Charles
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
I think a lot of people get involved to write new articles. It looks like 2007 was 'peak oil' for new articles; after that it was getting harder to find new articles to write; about half of the articles that were realistically likely to be covered, were already covered.
Does it make sense to say this when *thousands* of articles are being created every day? Where does the idea even come from that "about half of the articles that were realistically likely to be covered, were already covered"? The question that needs to be asked is whether the "New articles per day" statistic is a measure of the articles being created, or the articles that are still there as having been created on that day, a set period (e.g. a year) after being created? i.e. Is the rate of article deletion included or excluded from those figures?
My view is that the rate of article creation and the number of "missing" articles depends *heavily* on the topic area. Some topic areas are very well covered, others are not so well covered. In the former areas, you will indeed struggle to find new articles to create, but there are some areas (history in particular) where there are thousands (probably tens of thousands) of articles still needed. I could easily make lists hundreds of items long of things that an article could be written on (this is limited mainly by the time I have to compile such lists), mostly on historical subjects, but also a fair amount of contemporary stuff as well. Seriously. Pick any topic and I can guarantee that a list of ten new articles for that topic area would be easy to compile.
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).
A better approach would be to look at samples of article creation and see what articles are being created and that will give you an idea of where the gaps are being filled in and hence how big the gaps are.
Carcharoth
I think Charles' draft analogy is a good one.
The article creation rate should be slowing, and expansion should be growing, which is what we are focusing on for the most part. This ties into the decline in new contributors, but the continued activity amongst regular and long term users.
~Keegan
On 28/03/2010, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com
I think a lot of people get involved to write new articles. It looks like 2007 was 'peak oil' for new articles; after that it was getting harder to find new articles to write; about half of the articles that were realistically likely to be covered, were already covered.
Does it make sense to say this when *thousands* of articles are being created every day?
We're currently looking at about a net increase of about 1200 articles per day. and seems to be falling.
Where does the idea even come from that "about half of the articles that were realistically likely to be covered, were already covered"? The question that needs to be asked is whether the "New articles per day" statistic is a measure of the articles being created, or the articles that are still there as having been created on that day, a set period (e.g. a year) after being created? i.e. Is the rate of article deletion included or excluded from those figures?
The idea comes from a mixture of looking at the statistics peak and looking at the articles that still are needed. Nearly all of the low-hanging fruit is clearly gone now. Most of the mid-hanging fruit is also now gone. We're getting towards the top of the tree, things are getting more obscure. This is a *good* thing, not having so many holes in the Wikipedia!
My view is that the rate of article creation and the number of "missing" articles depends *heavily* on the topic area. Some topic areas are very well covered, others are not so well covered. In the former areas, you will indeed struggle to find new articles to create, but there are some areas (history in particular) where there are thousands (probably tens of thousands) of articles still needed.
I'm sure you're correct. So if there's twenty or thirty other similar areas, then we're looking at a under a million articles left to write. We're currently at 3.2 million. I think we'll exceed 4 million within a few years.
could easily make lists hundreds of items long of things that an article could be written on (this is limited mainly by the time I have to compile such lists), mostly on historical subjects, but also a fair amount of contemporary stuff as well. Seriously. Pick any topic and I can guarantee that a list of ten new articles for that topic area would be easy to compile.
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).
That's not very many compared to 3.2 million articles, but I don't mean to knock it in any way, just trying to put things into perspective.
A better approach would be to look at samples of article creation and see what articles are being created and that will give you an idea of where the gaps are being filled in and hence how big the gaps are.
This IS the point though; we're now looking for the gaps. That's exactly what I'm saying. The Wikipedia should more or less run out of gaps in about 3 years (ish- but it's never going to completely run out, but growth from existing knowledge will be progressively slower and slower). OTOH the circle of knowledge is still growing, at a somewhat slower rate.
Carcharoth
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
The idea comes from a mixture of looking at the statistics peak and looking at the articles that still are needed. Nearly all of the low-hanging fruit is clearly gone now. Most of the mid-hanging fruit is also now gone. We're getting towards the top of the tree, things are getting more obscure. This is a *good* thing, not having so many holes in the Wikipedia!
But are the holes small ones to be filled in with only a few articles or large ones that will take a large number of articles to fill in. Or to put that another way, is the number of "obscure" articles much larger than the number of "obvious" articles. Or to use your analogy, are there more fruit at the top of the tree than at the bottom?
Carcharoth wrote:
My view is that the rate of article creation and the number of "missing" articles depends *heavily* on the topic area. Some topic areas are very well covered, others are not so well covered. In the former areas, you will indeed struggle to find new articles to create, but there are some areas (history in particular) where there are thousands (probably tens of thousands) of articles still needed.
Ian Woollard wrote:
I'm sure you're correct. So if there's twenty or thirty other similar areas, then we're looking at a under a million articles left to write. We're currently at 3.2 million. I think we'll exceed 4 million within a few years.
My view is that the growth can continue almost indefinitely, but the rate slows as the obvious articles get written. That doesn't mean that there is a natural limit, just that future growth will take a long time (maybe forever) given that the articles to be written require ever increasing amounts of specialist knowledge (unless you redirect efforts towards improving existing articles and strictly enforce which articles take priority - e.g. getting the core articles to a good state before writing more articles on obscure topics).
<snip>
A better approach would be to look at samples of article creation and see what articles are being created and that will give you an idea of where the gaps are being filled in and hence how big the gaps are.
This IS the point though; we're now looking for the gaps. That's exactly what I'm saying. The Wikipedia should more or less run out of gaps in about 3 years (ish- but it's never going to completely run out, but growth from existing knowledge will be progressively slower and slower). OTOH the circle of knowledge is still growing, at a somewhat slower rate.
I meant actually looking at actual articles created and seeing whether they are really as obscure as you think, rather than generalising. :-) If your hypothesis is correct, the articles being created should increasingly be obscure ones being created by experienced Wikipedians. Have you looked to see if that is what is actually happening?
Carcharoth
Even for the US, about 80% of the members of state legislatures historically are not covered. For the current Michigan House of Representatives, only 50% of the current members have articles, and almost none of the earlier ones. this is very low-lying fruit, well within the reach of any beginner.
My guess is that for the US alone there are a half-million similarly unquestionably notable people with easy bios to do. Using our current standards of notability, and the current level of skill in research, we could probably easily double the size of Wikipedia with material from just English language sources.
If the other Wikipedias did similarly full coverage of their home countries and we translated the articles, there would probably be potential for an order of magnitude.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 9:42 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
The idea comes from a mixture of looking at the statistics peak and looking at the articles that still are needed. Nearly all of the low-hanging fruit is clearly gone now. Most of the mid-hanging fruit is also now gone. We're getting towards the top of the tree, things are getting more obscure. This is a *good* thing, not having so many holes in the Wikipedia!
But are the holes small ones to be filled in with only a few articles or large ones that will take a large number of articles to fill in. Or to put that another way, is the number of "obscure" articles much larger than the number of "obvious" articles. Or to use your analogy, are there more fruit at the top of the tree than at the bottom?
Carcharoth wrote:
My view is that the rate of article creation and the number of "missing" articles depends *heavily* on the topic area. Some topic areas are very well covered, others are not so well covered. In the former areas, you will indeed struggle to find new articles to create, but there are some areas (history in particular) where there are thousands (probably tens of thousands) of articles still needed.
Ian Woollard wrote:
I'm sure you're correct. So if there's twenty or thirty other similar areas, then we're looking at a under a million articles left to write. We're currently at 3.2 million. I think we'll exceed 4 million within a few years.
My view is that the growth can continue almost indefinitely, but the rate slows as the obvious articles get written. That doesn't mean that there is a natural limit, just that future growth will take a long time (maybe forever) given that the articles to be written require ever increasing amounts of specialist knowledge (unless you redirect efforts towards improving existing articles and strictly enforce which articles take priority - e.g. getting the core articles to a good state before writing more articles on obscure topics).
<snip>
A better approach would be to look at samples of article creation and see what articles are being created and that will give you an idea of where the gaps are being filled in and hence how big the gaps are.
This IS the point though; we're now looking for the gaps. That's exactly what I'm saying. The Wikipedia should more or less run out of gaps in about 3 years (ish- but it's never going to completely run out, but growth from existing knowledge will be progressively slower and slower). OTOH the circle of knowledge is still growing, at a somewhat slower rate.
I meant actually looking at actual articles created and seeing whether they are really as obscure as you think, rather than generalising. :-) If your hypothesis is correct, the articles being created should increasingly be obscure ones being created by experienced Wikipedians. Have you looked to see if that is what is actually happening?
Carcharoth
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On 29 March 2010 03:55, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Even for the US, about 80% of the members of state legislatures historically are not covered. For the current Michigan House of Representatives, only 50% of the current members have articles, and almost none of the earlier ones. this is very low-lying fruit, well within the reach of any beginner.
Attempting to redefine the difficulty in writing any given article won't help. Without access to the back issues of local newspapers writing such articles would be rather dificult and even with them acquiring the level of base knowledge that tends to be required to write about a subject would not be easy.
If the other Wikipedias did similarly full coverage of their home countries and we translated the articles, there would probably be potential for an order of magnitude.
Size of national libiaries and the like says no.
On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 7:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 March 2010 03:55, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
If the other Wikipedias did similarly full coverage of their home countries and we translated the articles, there would probably be potential for an order of magnitude.
Size of national libraries and the like says no.
How so? Number of countries is 193 (roughly), but even if you factor in the fact that some countries share languages and some countries are a bit, well, small, you still have something that could approach a factor of x10 (i.e. an order of magnitude). There are plenty of cases where I've run into a blank wall as far as English-language sources go, but have been able to see that sources exist in another language (usually the native language of the person or institution concerned), so rather than miss things in translation, I try and find an article in that language edition of Wikipedia, or wait for, or request, an article, and then ask for it to be translated.
Has anyone ever done a study on what the total number of articles would be if you assumed all interwiki links are currently correct (many are not) and assumed that all non-interwikied articles need translation (rather than someone adding the correct interwiki link, which is just as likely), and come up with a total figure if all articles were translated?
Carcharoth
On 29 March 2010 19:18, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
How so? Number of countries is 193 (roughly), but even if you factor in the fact that some countries share languages and some countries are a bit, well, small, you still have something that could approach a factor of x10 (i.e. an order of magnitude).
Because once you move outside Western Europe and north America you don't have to go back very far before record have been lost, destroyed, never kept or kept by Western Euorpeans.
Take Ghana for example. Records are extremely thin (the odd islamic report, Portuguese and Dutch reports from the cost from the 15th century onwars). Solid records of the whole area don't appear until the British set fire to/pacified it in the 19th century.
Take Asamani an accra chief. Managed to capture Osu Castle back the 1690s. A few records exist of that and reports of European traders who apparently had no problems trading with him while he occupied the castle. Other than that he hardly seems to exist.
On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 7:51 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 March 2010 19:18, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
How so? Number of countries is 193 (roughly), but even if you factor in the fact that some countries share languages and some countries are a bit, well, small, you still have something that could approach a factor of x10 (i.e. an order of magnitude).
Because once you move outside Western Europe and north America you don't have to go back very far before record have been lost, destroyed, never kept or kept by Western Europeans.
<snip>
Sure, but my other question remains. What is the degree of overlap between Wikipedia language editions and what is the rate at which stuff is being translated and moved between editions, and what could the potential eventual size be if that was done with improved efficiency and reliability?
Carcharoth
Within any state, any public library will be able to assist sufficiently on their own state's legislature. Even for those who don't like libraries, GBooks probably will in the next few years scan all local newspapers for pre-1920 (they have quite a lot already), & what information for that period they do not do, other projects will, especially for public records. I deliberately picked Michigan, because of the quality and amount of scanning with free access being done by the University of Michigan. Some other states are almost equally good for local material, such as Texas.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 2:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 March 2010 03:55, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Even for the US, about 80% of the members of state legislatures historically are not covered. For the current Michigan House of Representatives, only 50% of the current members have articles, and almost none of the earlier ones. this is very low-lying fruit, well within the reach of any beginner.
Attempting to redefine the difficulty in writing any given article won't help. Without access to the back issues of local newspapers writing such articles would be rather dificult and even with them acquiring the level of base knowledge that tends to be required to write about a subject would not be easy.
If the other Wikipedias did similarly full coverage of their home countries and we translated the articles, there would probably be potential for an order of magnitude.
Size of national libiaries and the like says no.
-- geni
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 29 March 2010 19:43, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Within any state, any public library will be able to assist sufficiently on their own state's legislature.
Much of it isn't online and photocopies remain way pricey. Do libraries generally throw people out for getting out their phone and photographing pages from public domain books?
- d.
On 29 March 2010 19:46, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 March 2010 19:43, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Within any state, any public library will be able to assist sufficiently on their own state's legislature.
Much of it isn't online and photocopies remain way pricey. Do libraries generally throw people out for getting out their phone and photographing pages from public domain books?
Depends where you are. Some library systems will suggest you bring a proper camera (rather than photocopying at all) other counties will have a fit.
On 29/03/2010, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Even for the US, about 80% of the members of state legislatures historically are not covered. For the current Michigan House of Representatives, only 50% of the current members have articles, and almost none of the earlier ones. this is very low-lying fruit, well within the reach of any beginner.
There's the question as to how notable they really are; would you ever get significant coverage for most of them? Is part of Wikipedia's mission really to have all of the members of congress, or would we just link out to that?
My suspicion is that whatever the policies say, a lot of this would get AFDd.
In any case, an encyclopedia is supposed to summarise knowledge. Unless a particular person is really important to that *summary* for more than one thing they probably shouldn't be in the Wikipedia.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
If you want a higher level, 90% of the present members of the US National Academy of Engineering do not have articles.
"More than one thing" seems a weird standard, in my opinion. An athlete wouldnt be notable unless also a movie star? But perhaps you mean elected twice to their legislature? I do not consider myself an extreme inclusionist. I for example do not support the inclusion of members of most city councils, or local school boards.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/03/2010, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Even for the US, about 80% of the members of state legislatures historically are not covered. For the current Michigan House of Representatives, only 50% of the current members have articles, and almost none of the earlier ones. this is very low-lying fruit, well within the reach of any beginner.
There's the question as to how notable they really are; would you ever get significant coverage for most of them? Is part of Wikipedia's mission really to have all of the members of congress, or would we just link out to that?
My suspicion is that whatever the policies say, a lot of this would get AFDd.
In any case, an encyclopedia is supposed to summarise knowledge. Unless a particular person is really important to that *summary* for more than one thing they probably shouldn't be in the Wikipedia.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
-- -Ian Woollard
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On 30 March 2010 18:16, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
If you want a higher level, 90% of the present members of the US National Academy of Engineering do not have articles.
"More than one thing" seems a weird standard, in my opinion.
To be expected it was invented by the BLP mob. See [[Wikipedia:BLP1E]].
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 6:23 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 30 March 2010 18:16, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
If you want a higher level, 90% of the present members of the US National Academy of Engineering do not have articles.
"More than one thing" seems a weird standard, in my opinion.
To be expected it was invented by the BLP mob. See [[Wikipedia:BLP1E]].
To be fair, that refers to (or should refer to) a chronologically constrained (i.e. brief) event that propels someone to passing fame in a newspaper or online, not to a career where someone is notable for only one thing.
Carcharoth
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 6:23 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 30 March 2010 18:16, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
If you want a higher level, 90% of the present members of the US National Academy of Engineering do not have articles.
"More than one thing" seems a weird standard, in my opinion.
To be expected it was invented by the BLP mob. See [[Wikipedia:BLP1E]].
To be fair, that refers to (or should refer to) a chronologically constrained (i.e. brief) event that propels someone to passing fame in a newspaper or online, not to a career where someone is notable for only one thing.
Carcharoth
I have always had a bit of a problem with blp1e. It is a sort of blp thing combined with wp:notnews. I am generally off the opinion that if the specific event is notable enough to warrant an article, and the specific event is centered solely around that person, I believe the article should be on that person, focusing on that event. Say, a person wins some sort of trophy, lets call him John Doe, and the trophy the awesome trophy. And say there is a lot of media attention that John wins the trophy, enough to say there is more then passing coverage, enough for [[WP:N]] in general. Should we have an article [[John Doe winning the awesome trophy in 2010]]? Or should we just have one on [[John Doe]]?
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 6:23 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 30 March 2010 18:16, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
If you want a higher level, 90% of the present members of the US National Academy of Engineering do not have articles.
"More than one thing" seems a weird standard, in my opinion.
To be expected it was invented by the BLP mob. See [[Wikipedia:BLP1E]].
To be fair, that refers to (or should refer to) a chronologically constrained (i.e. brief) event that propels someone to passing fame in a newspaper or online, not to a career where someone is notable for only one thing.
I have always had a bit of a problem with blp1e. It is a sort of blp thing combined with wp:notnews. I am generally off the opinion that if the specific event is notable enough to warrant an article, and the specific event is centered solely around that person, I believe the article should be on that person, focusing on that event. Say, a person wins some sort of trophy, lets call him John Doe, and the trophy the awesome trophy. And say there is a lot of media attention that John wins the trophy, enough to say there is more then passing coverage, enough for [[WP:N]] in general. Should we have an article [[John Doe winning the awesome trophy in 2010]]? Or should we just have one on [[John Doe]]?
Didn't that evolve from the "murdered people" standard, where instead of having an article on a person who was murdered, you have an article on the crime? Not that such a standard was completely adopted, I don't think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murders
That is what I mean, though a lot of that is tabloid-ish journalism.
Carcharoth
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 8:16 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 6:23 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 30 March 2010 18:16, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
If you want a higher level, 90% of the present members of the US National Academy of Engineering do not have articles.
"More than one thing" seems a weird standard, in my opinion.
To be expected it was invented by the BLP mob. See [[Wikipedia:BLP1E]].
To be fair, that refers to (or should refer to) a chronologically constrained (i.e. brief) event that propels someone to passing fame in a newspaper or online, not to a career where someone is notable for only one thing.
I have always had a bit of a problem with blp1e. It is a sort of blp thing combined with wp:notnews. I am generally off the opinion that if the specific event is notable enough to warrant an article, and the specific event is centered solely around that person, I believe the article should be on that person, focusing on that event. Say, a person wins some sort of trophy, lets call him John Doe, and the trophy the awesome trophy. And say there is a lot of media attention that John wins the trophy, enough to say there is more then passing coverage, enough for [[WP:N]] in general. Should we have an article [[John Doe winning the awesome trophy in 2010]]? Or should we just have one on [[John Doe]]?
Didn't that evolve from the "murdered people" standard, where instead of having an article on a person who was murdered, you have an article on the crime? Not that such a standard was completely adopted, I don't think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murders
That is what I mean, though a lot of that is tabloid-ish journalism.
Carcharoth
Ugh, murders, the kind of articles where you get stuck trying to explain that "he left behind a loving wife and to beautiful children" should not be in the article, even if you have 5 refs that say his wive loved him, 8 that say she was left behind, and 15 (each kid) that say the kids were pretty.
It did evolve from that, and it made very good sense in that context, to avoid having the name of a victim given undue & unfortunate prominence. It makes sense in some other BLP contexts also, but its expansion to a general rule is what was absurd. BLP1E should, in my opinion, have been confined to a convenient way of explaining NOT TABLOID; that we do not write articles about someone whose involvement in something was incidental of of no actual importance.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
Didn't that evolve from the "murdered people" standard, where instead of having an article on a person who was murdered, you have an article on the crime? Not that such a standard was completely adopted, I don't think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murders
That is what I mean, though a lot of that is tabloid-ish journalism.
Carcharoth
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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.
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