Daniel Mayer wrote:
On Monday 02 September 2002 07:15 am, David Levinson wrote:
Each article, as it ages, presumably tends to get longer as people add content. New articles start small. People add facts, they get larger. They spawn incomplete links[?] and new articles are created, but start small.
You just gave me a great idea -- How about we have a population pyramid on the statistics page? See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands
This is an interesting approach. The article set could be divided into deciles (or some other suitable sized sample). I would guess that the median article size that we currently have is likely fairly constant. The markers for the deciles are likely similarly constant. This is, of course, subject to minor sampling variation. People who use population pyramids let them be indicators of broad changes in populations. Statistically significant variations from key markers would suggest differences in the patterns of participation.
Perhaps one of our more mathematically could do an analysis on "The fractal geometry of Wikipedia participation"
Eclecticology