[Foundation-l] Lack of research on Wikipedia

[Chad]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 12:23 PM, Lars Aronsson<lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> Yes, completely. Do other Wikipedias show the same S-curve of growth?
>
> I don't think it's an S-curve. I think we are seeing linear
> growth, with a few exceptions in the very early days (years).
> But hey, that's growth in the number of articles.  We shouldn't
> focus on the number of articles, but on the overall usefulness.
>
> Day 1: Create article "Apple is a fruit".
> Day 2: Create article "Pear is a fruit".
> Day 3: Extend article about apples. Add photos. Cite sources.
>
> Day 3: Zero growth in the number of articles. Panic!!!
>
>
> --
>  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
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Which is why the article count means nothing. Tim pointed out some
time ago (I can't find the quote offhand, pardon my paraphrasing) about
the article counter being terribly inaccurate over the years--counter drift
I believe was his exact phrasing. A re-run of the full count would probably
result in a very different number than what we think. I'm not talking to the
tune of hundreds of thousands of articles, but probably at least a few
thousands lower than what we've got now.

Of course, nobody wants that number to go down--article milestones are
great PR. We've just celebrated 3mil, and it would be rough for the
community to see 2.8mil tomorrow :)

-Chad