On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 3:04 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, You may want to consider the scale of things ... when you are talking chemicals, proteins a number like 240 million articles can be expected. With such numbers you have to wonder to what extend Wikipedia can cope. Thanks, GerardM
I couldn't agree more. My major complaint to mass creation of articles by bots is the simple problem of maintainability.
Assuming the English Wikipedia has (more or less) a few thousand dedicated contributors (let's say 3500), that approximates to about 705 articles per person. Now, balloon that number up to 4 million articles, and you now have 1142 articles per person.
Now granted, not every article is being updated and maintained on a daily (or even weekly or monthly) basis. However, those articles _still_ need a helpful eye kept on them. Vandalism and libel are still very much a part of the projects, and without someone to keep an eye on things, it degenerates rather quickly. Antivandalism bots can only help so much.
Personally, I don't have the time in the day to sit there and revert vandalism on 240 million articles, nor do many others, I would gather.
-Chad