Hey, I was just thinking today about how quickly we're writing new articles and I was wondering if anyone (looks around for mathematicians/statisticians) could calculate the exponential curve for the growth of wikipedia and based on that try to guesstimate travelling at the same exponential speed when we will hit the 100,000 article mark. There's your math homework for the day, brought to you by Wikipedia.
Hey, and no comments about my degree in mathematics, k...?
Thanks, Chuck
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Chuck Smith wrote:
Hey, I was just thinking today about how quickly we're writing new articles and I was wondering if anyone (looks around for mathematicians/statisticians) could calculate the exponential curve for the growth of wikipedia and based on that try to guesstimate travelling at the same exponential speed when we will hit the 100,000 article mark. There's your math homework for the day, brought to you by Wikipedia.
With some imperfect data I got the equation:
Articles=1.6*Days^1.6077
Days=Days after January 15 2000.
That means we will have 100 000 articles in August 2003.
On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 03:21:40AM +0000, Jo?o M?rio Miranda wrote:
Chuck Smith wrote:
Hey, I was just thinking today about how quickly we're writing new articles and I was wondering if anyone (looks around for mathematicians/statisticians) could calculate the exponential curve for the growth of wikipedia and based on that try to guesstimate travelling at the same exponential speed when we will hit the 100,000 article mark. There's your math homework for the day, brought to you by Wikipedia.
With some imperfect data I got the equation:
Articles=1.6*Days^1.6077
Days=Days after January 15 2000.
That means we will have 100 000 articles in August 2003.
One interesting phenomenon, though, is that as the content broadens, people might tend to work more on existing articles and new article creation slow correspondingly. Not that that's a bad thing. It's better to have 50,000 excellent articles than 500,000 rambling, incoherent, or incorrect ones.
Regardless, it seems almost a mathematical certainty that Wikipedia is going to be one of the best resources on the Net. Already is, really. :-)
On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, David Merrill wrote:
One interesting phenomenon, though, is that as the content broadens, people might tend to work more on existing articles and new article creation slow correspondingly. Not that that's a bad thing. It's better to have 50,000 excellent articles than 500,000 rambling, incoherent, or incorrect ones.
I agree with this, by the way. I have a little theory that, as the easy and broad topics get pretty much filled in, the project is going to start looking more interesting to specialists, and I'll see a gradual influx of Ph.D.'s and researchers filling in the blanks on the frontiers of their fields.
This is mainly wishful thinking, of course; there's no *real* way of knowing what's gonna happen. It's possible that we will always suffer from the stigma (if you want to call it that :-) ) of being completely open to anyone to contribute, and as a result, there will be a level of speciality, accessible mainly to specialists who care about exclusivity, beyond which we just won't be able to go. Of course, there will be exceptions, as in the case of the engineer who wrote some articles about some extremely specialized electrical engineering topics...
Idle musings...
Brace yourself for a huge announcement tomorrow. :-)
Larry
On Wed, Feb 06, 2002 at 09:32:54PM -0800, Larry Sanger wrote:
On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, David Merrill wrote:
One interesting phenomenon, though, is that as the content broadens, people might tend to work more on existing articles and new article creation slow correspondingly. Not that that's a bad thing. It's better to have 50,000 excellent articles than 500,000 rambling, incoherent, or incorrect ones.
I agree with this, by the way. I have a little theory that, as the easy and broad topics get pretty much filled in, the project is going to start looking more interesting to specialists, and I'll see a gradual influx of Ph.D.'s and researchers filling in the blanks on the frontiers of their fields.
I could see that happening.
Don't take this the wrong way, but it's also possible Wikipedia just can't ever be really "authoritative" in any field. And that is fine with me. Perhaps the big draw of Wikipedia will be that it contains much more accessible general information than anything else. I don't know if that will be the case or not, but I also really don't care. However, it finally shapes up, it will be (and is) great. :-)
It's not the kind of thing you can force. It will become what Wikipedians want it to be. As a Wiki, it really can be all things to all people.
One thing I already notice about Wikipedia is that the content is much broader than any other encyclopedia. Almost an Encyclopedia Galactica or H2G2. That's what I like most about it. In fact, once or twice I have been interested in finding out about something little-known, and started an article with nothing but a few questions I had. In each case, the information was forthcoming. What a cool thing that was!
Anyway, enough meta-discussion on content.
Brace yourself for a huge announcement tomorrow. :-)
Oh? Can't wait. :-)
Later,
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