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

[Anthony]

On 10/9/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/9/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Home sales decline in November, or number of home sales ever made
> > increases at a lower rate in November?
>
> The claim was "actually been declining" which isn't supported by the
> data. It's less than the peak, but you don't call home sales in
> decline at all times that it is less than its all time peak.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipedia_Article_Edits_Minus_Reverts.png

That looks like a decline to me.  The peak was about 8 months ago and
every month since has been lower than the previous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipedia_Article_Edits.png

That ones less clear, I guess.  According to that maybe the number of
daily edits has leveled off after a recent decline.  Then again, it
might have just been an anomaly in the June/July area where the
relatively big dropoff took place.  I think time will tell on that
one.

Of course this all assumes these charts actually reflect correct data,
which I haven't really looked into at all.  How were deleted articles
handled?  How was the selection of the sample chosen?  Isn't there a
sort of survivorship bias in that selection?