(I have posted this on [[Larry Sanger/Estimating article numbers]].)

So Wikipedia has almost 10,000 pages. This represents a heck of a lot of work and a heck of a lot of content, and we can all be proud, but...I think there's a bit of a problem. I have a puzzle for you: how many of these pages are *articles*?

''We'' all know "10,000 pages" does not mean "10,000 encyclopedia articles." There are a lot of redirection pages, Talk pages, member pages and subpages, commentary pages, Wikipedia project pages, and other non-articles. But the new reader doesn't know this, and if some news media source comes along (as they inevitably will--it's only a matter of time now), I think we might be blasted for misrepresenting the extent of our achievement. Not only would that be shameful, it lose us the participation of potential new contributors who ''care'' about how accurately we represent our achievement, though they don't care if we say we have 10,000 or, instead, a mere 6,000 articles. :-)

I wouldn't envy anyone the task of counting the ''actual'' number of articles. But we could estimate the number.

Anyone care to give it a shot, and report the results?

For purposes of this exercise, I don't think we need to draw a distinction between one-sentence articles to the effect that so-and-so was a famous novelist, and treatise-length pages. Both of those can, for our purposes, be called articles, or perhaps "entries." What ''can't'' be called articles are: * redirection pages * Talk pages * member pages and subpages thereof * pages describing the Wikipedia project (e.g., the FAQ, news, announcements, etc.) * pages that consist *only* of links to other articles, with virtually no content of their own * any other categories?

What I'd like to do with your estimate is to make the assumption that the ''ratio'' of present pages to present articles will remain roughly the same for the next 5,000 or so ''pages.'' (Or perhaps you can tell me how long the ratio can probably be relied upon.)

Then, we can (honestly) boast "over 5,000 articles" (notice, articles, not pages) or "over 5,000 entries" on the front page. This will make our work seem more substantial, more real, and that's important if we're going to make this a reasonably serious project.

I'll bet the present number is right around 5,000, but I really don't know!

Larry