[Foundation-l] The Statistical Decline of the English Wikipedia

[Robert Rohde]

Greg,

We look at it differently.  The total number of edits made to Wikipedia can
never decline, but the rate at which those edits are made can either
increase or decrease.  I tend to think that it is that rate (rather than the
integral) that is the most interesting measure of activity within the
Wikipedia community.

Hmmmm, I just realized I dropped a word.  The title of this thread was
supposed to be "the statistical decline of the english Wikipedia COMMUNITY",
as it is the descreasing activity of that community that I think is the
interesting observation.

-Robert

On 10/9/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/9/07, Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:
> > Those are great stats, thanks for your work! I'm not surprised to see a
> > decline, personally.
> [snip]
>
> Hey! In what kind of new-speak is a *daily* *increase* of 140,000
> somethings or 2,000 somethings, or 7,000 something a *decline*?
>
> The headline should instead be "The rate of something is lower than
> its all time peak!" or "First derivative of a non-exponential function
> turns out to be flat!" ... :)
>
> It's the truth that the character of EnWp's growth has changed in the
> last year. I think Milos' comments up-thread were pretty intresting.
> ... but I think it's really misleading to look at these numbers and
> say "decline".
>
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